A new way to Google

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THE INTERNET feels like equal parts information, noise, and bait.

If you're like me, you get sucked into rabbit holes online, attempting to sift through all the fluff to find meaningful information.

An unexpected shift has happened for me in the last six months: I barely use Google anymore.

I've replaced maybe 90% of my Google searches with Perplexity.ai (<- $10 discount, if you want). They did not sponsor this post, but I want to tell you about it, even you don't use my referral link.

You can also use it for free, without an account, to get a feel.

How I feel using normal Google searches now:

Why this is different than 'Googling'

Perplexity is kind of like if every Google search was just a summary of the relevant content, with linked citations.

There are three main differences in this internet searching experience:

1. Searches are in threads – conversation threads are started with every new search and you can ask follow up questions in it
2. The system summarizes – the system will form a synthesis of related content it reviewed, in an attempt to give you an answer or summary, rather than a list of links (it gives you those too)
3. It will search videos – as far as I can tell, it's pulling from YouTube, but I suspect this will expand going forward

Under the hood, Perplexity uses large language models to figure out what you're looking for, reviews many results from the internet, and then summarizes the results for you.

It cites the source for any point it makes/quotes, so you can freely open that link if you want.

There are also some cool features that you can use to organize information into projects or pages and use it via API.

To be clear, this is not a way to skip thorough research, but I find it's a great starting place for most curiosities, to more quickly figure out where I want/need to dive deeper.

The product also gives you different ways to search, more on that below.

An example search

Let's consider an example search query:

"How might US tariffs impact the wine industry?"

What Google provided:

This is standard, with a potentially useful collection of CA-specific stories, likely coming up because I performed the search in CA.

Notice that there is no "AI Overview" at the top, that is starting to appear in more and more Google searches. I suspect these will also improve and that they launched this feature because of Perplexity.

What Perplexity (Pro) provided:

This is different. The experience is more focused and the system is attempting to answer the question, rather than just providing content that could answer the question.

Note that it reviewed 12 sources, lists them at the top, and adds a numerical citation within the context of the response.

Also, you'll see you can ask follow-up questions directly or select from a list of suggested questions (below), like Google.

You can also have it use a reasoning model, meaning that it will use a different AI model that will slow down and "think" about what you're asking for, before responding.

What Perplexity (with r1) provided:

You can see that it actually reviewed fewer sources, in this example, but you can see each of the steps in its thought process.

Here was its response:

This response is similar, as it's drawing from many of the same sources, but it does incorporate some additional context from the past.

Where this really functionality really shines is when you have a complex "query", aka you type in something with multiple thoughts, that Google would typically ignore.

Three ways I like to use Perplexity

1. When first diving into a topic – I often find myself researching new tools, AI concepts, or software engineering stuff I need to figure out fast.
   1. 'Pro' search if it's a single sentence question
   2. 'Reasoning' search if it's multiple
2. When I want more rigor – a family member has Crohn's disease and we needed to make a decision on medication. We're not doctors and we had gotten two pretty different opinions from two doctors. We used Perplexity to pull research papers about the specific medications efficacy and help us generate more specific questions to level up our thinking.

3. When gauging the 'pulse' – the internet is noisy and opinionated, so I often find it helpful to read a broad set of sources to get a sense of the internet's general reaction to something. For me, this is usually in the context of assessing a tool I might use, so it's helpful to have AI comb through the reviews, case studies, and posts to give me some signal.

Bonus: if you pay for the 'Pro' plan for Perplexity ($20/mo) and ChatGPT ($200/mo), you can use the 'Deep Research' function to generate full reports on a given topic. I do this when depth is important and I actually want to read quite a bit.

That's it, go try Perplexity, it's awesome.

If you want $10 off, use my referral link HERE.

Happy Searching,

Stephen