Google has been the supreme search engine for as long as I can remember. However, while many have attempted to dethrone the platform, AI tool Perplexity might have the best chance yet.
Perplexity operates like a combination of ChatGPT and Google. It is powered by AI, allowing you to make searches in the same way you would on Google, but with the added benefit of AI organizing all of the information for you.
It is very similar to Google’s AI overview feature, which has been rolling out over the last year or so. And yet, when comparing the two I just feel that Perplexity does the job so much better.
Because of that, I use Perplexity over Google most of the time. Here are the four main reasons I’ve made the change.
Detailed responses
Perplexity does a great job at cramming as much detail as possible into your responses. It does this by scouring the internet and combining answers from Reddit, news articles, journals and more.
This means that whatever you are searching for, Perplexity will offer up a rather detailed yet precise response. This is especially useful when trying to make buying decisions, combining professional reviews and the opinions of other shoppers.
While Google can do the same via its AI overviews, its answers are never as detailed and tend to rely on just the top answers to generate a response. By scouring a wider range, Perplexity is able to provide a better adapted answer.
Accurate answers
One of the main features that Perplexity benefits from is its accuracy. When we spoke to Perplexity’s head of communications earlier this year he explained that, as a feature, Perplexity is hallucination-free.
That’s because it is taking information from trustworthy sources online and simply gathering them together to answer your question.
Google’s AI overview can quite often get confused with jokes, references or mistranslated information. This has, in the past, given unsafe advice or tried to answer a question on a completely separate topic.
Using attachments
One of my favorite features with Perplexity is the ability to add attachments. This is one of the areas where Perplexity feels a bit more like a chatbot.
You can, for example, add a research paper that you are working on into Perplexity and ask it to search the web for academic papers that are relevant to your work. Or, you can input a floor plan along with ideas for renovations, asking Perplexity to generate estimates for costs of this work.
In other words, the attachment feature is a way to make more relevant searches on your behalf. It comes in handy all the time for me.
No click-throughs
While AI Overview can often give you the answer you need, it doesn’t appear every time. That can make it more challenging to research topics, requiring you to open a variety of links to get your answer.
Where AI overview only appears in certain situations, Perplexity is being directly asked to perform a task, meaning it will appear every single time. This means you never have to go crawling through different sites to get your answer.
Equally, Perplexity makes it easy to answer follow-up questions, listing a variety of suggested next questions at the bottom of the page each time.
Should you ditch Google for Perplexity?
Perplexity isn’t a perfect switch for Google. Google is much better for certain tasks, such as planning routes on a map, shopping or for situations where you want your information to come from particular sources.
They are very similar in what they offer, but Google still remains the go-to source for users and there is good reason for that. Equally, Google’s AI Overview is getting better (even though it is still an up and down experience).
However, Perplexity does just feel like the better search engine in a number of ways. I often find it to be my preferred option for a lot of tasks, especially when I'm doing research.
These days I find myself using both Google and Perplexity, but the scales are definitely shifting and Perplexity is gaining traction.
More from Tom's Guide
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