Battle of the AI Search Engines

Breaking Search News! Check out Perplexity's new feature that may change the way we shop....

This summer I wrote about how tools like Perplexity are changing Google's search game forever. Instead of putting a few words into Google's search engine and then click-click-clicking down the page of links to find your answer, Perplexity lets you ask a question and receive an AI-generated report that has clicked around for you and compiled all the answers for you.

I knew it was coming, but I was still excited to see ChatGPT's answer to Google search launch yesterday. This not only lets you shortcut the standard research work, it also addresses ChatGPT's hallucinations (translation: stops it from making stuff up and lyin' like a rug).

I used a trending topic to test the search capabilities on all three tools: Google, Perplexity and ChatGPT. Which version do you like the best?

Google Search is looking stale

I started with Google's search engine first, and we've seen this all before. Google organized the info with the top stories first, then we had a bunch of links. We can see the headlines of the articles, but we'd have to click around to get the answers of what actually happened to this Insta-famous furry friend.

Perplexity Search: Too much, maybe?

Now sure, I'm interested in the plight of this poor squirrel and his much-loved owners. But Perplexity wanted to make sure I had the full story.

It broke the story down into multiple parts, and it ended up looking like a Wikipédia page. That's a lot of info about one silly squirrel.

ChatGPT Search (NEW!): A nice summary plus a video sample

For this experiment where I truly didn't need much info about the squirrel, I thought ChatGPT gave the best response. It's a little narrative summary with some adorable pics and a video for more info.

Fact Checks and Follow-Ups

ChatGPT still makes stuff up

Because I'm still a skeptic when it comes to ChatGPT's lyin' and cheatin', I asked follow-up questions to fact check. It quoted more sources and seemed ok. Then I asked another question, thinking that it would still look stuff up. It didn't double check its findings and just made something up until I called it out. Oh, ChatGPT -- will you ever learn?

Can Perplexity get it right?

Perplexity easily came up with Peanut's nickname and noted that no one seems to call him "The Nut" like ChatGPT suggested. And to be fair, I asked Google Search the same question.

Google AI Search lied, too

This inquiry prompted my Google Search Lab feature: AI Overview. This is Google's beta test of Perplexity-like search summaries minus all the clicking.

I don't know why the first inquiry didn't bring up the Google search lab, but asking about the nickname produced these AI-generated results that appear above all the regular links.

After adding this screenshot to this blog post, I caught a little lie. Peanut was seized on Wednesday, Oct. 30. The summary above says that it happened November 2024 -- which would have to be today.

Final Verdict: Perplexity is the best AI search engine so far

Even though Perplexity got a little chatty in its response, I'm a chatty person myself, so I forgive it. The other two still have lies that leak into the results.

But that's what happened today... tomorrow's a whole other set of advancements. Stay tuned!