Stop Googling - Try This Instead
I'm perplexed I never used this app before...
Ok, so I’m going to start this post off with a little vulnerability. Safe space, ok? Here are the things I’ve searched online for in the past week.
Lots of questions, right? I’m not alone in this. Many search engines have started scraping the answers to these types of questions from their top results.
A better way…
This workflow can feel tedious and I wondered if AI could provide a better alternative. Here’s what it looks like in Claude and ChatGPT 3.5.
Pretty cool, right? It's quick, it's fun, and it's AI so you just automatically feel sexier as a person. Win, win, win.
After using these flows for a while I found myself wanting to see the sources and double check things. Unfortunately, these tools don't really support that.
Sources
But I knew of another manifestation of ChatGPT that does: Bing Chat! I've played with this tool in the past, but mainly because Microsoft has it plastered all over anything Bing-related online. It's a cool idea, but it's a constant distraction on the Bing search results pages and I've found myself hating it merely on principle. That's not a good reason and I admit I have a problem. I'm working with my therapist on it.
Here's a better reason: as I was testing it I ran out of thread messages and I didn’t want to have to use a tool that regularly purged my history.
Enter Perplexity
It was around this time that I found Perplexity and this is where it gets good, guys!
According to their site:
Perplexity is your AI-powered Swiss Army Knife for information discovery and curiosity.
Let’s try our previous example:
"Wuuuuut??? This shit is so cool!"
It was love at first sight, folks:
Solid summary of multiple sources to answer my question
Links to all those sources
Relevant images that came up as part of Perplexity's search
Plus, I get a list of follow up questions I can ask within the context of this thread
Walkthrough
Check out this quick demo video for a better look:
TL;DR
If you're looking for a solid tool to help you find answers online, check Perplexity out. It can help you with:
Answering questions
Doing business or academic research
Planning a trip
Keeping up with the news in a fun, new way