[AI in Action] How to Use Perplexity AI: The Complete Guide for Cutting Your Research Time in Half

Episode #129: [AI in Action] How to Use Perplexity AI: The Complete Guide for Cutting Your Research Time in Half

WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE

Let’s be real: digging through dozens of Google tabs just to find one solid stat or update? Exhausting. And time-consuming.

 That’s where Perplexity AI comes in: a next-gen search and research assistant designed to save you hours every single week.

In this episode of Tech Savvy 101, I’m giving you a full walkthrough of Perplexity AI: what it is, how it works, and why it’s a total game-changer for small business owners, content creators, and entrepreneurs who don’t have time to waste.

Whether you're researching industry trends, gathering data for a blog post, or planning a product launch, Perplexity delivers fast, accurate, source-backed answers so you can cut the fluff and get to the good stuff.

✨ Bonus: This is part of my AI Essentials series where I teach you how to actually use today's best AI tools in real time, so you can feel confident (not confused!)

IN THIS EPISODE, I COVER:

➔ What makes Perplexity different from ChatGPT or Google (and when to use it)
➔ How to use search modes like Deep Research, Academic Search & Collections
➔ Real-world use cases for market research, content creation, competitor analysis & more
➔ Pro tips to get better results (and avoid common mistakes with AI search)

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

📌 Perplexity → https://www.perplexity.ai/
📌 AI Evergreen Content Machine → Join the Waitlist
📌 Watch the full YouTube tutorial for this episode → Click here
📌 Done-For-You Custom GPT Builds → Sign Up Here

🎙️ RELATED EPISODES OF TECH SAVVY 101: AI & AUTOMATION MADE SIMPLE: 

• Episode #105: ChatGPT Prompt Writing Tips: How to Get Juicy Results Every Time
• Episode #127: Claude Tutorial: The AI Assistant That’s Changing the Game
• Episode #130: Gemini vs ChatGPT: Which AI Is Better for Visual Content?
• Episode #131: Is Jasper AI the Ultimate Solution for Marketing Content Creation?

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS:

00:46 – Introducing Perplexity: The AI Search Tool
01:49 – Getting Started with Perplexity
11:31 – Perplexity vs. ChatGPT: A Comparative Analysis
17:12 – Advanced Features of Perplexity
18

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Transcript

Sarah Baker 0:00

Hey there. Welcome back to Tech Savvy 101: AI Automation Made Simple. I'm your host, Sarah Baker, your tech savvy bestie, who's here to help you simplify your business, embrace automation and save hours every week. Today I'm excited to continue our AI Essentials miniseries, where we're exploring powerful AI tools beyond just ChatGPT. In this series, I'm sharing my screen and giving you hands-on tutorials of the most valuable AI platforms that can transform how you work and create content in your business. Each tool in this series offers unique capabilities that might be perfect for specific tasks in your business. By the end of this mini series, you'll have a complete AI toolkit at your fingertips, and know exactly which tool to use for different situations. In today's episode, we're diving into Perplexity, an incredible AI search tool that could completely transform how you do business and find information online. If you're listening to this episode right now, don't worry, you'll find the YouTube link for this episode in the show notes. Feel free to listen along right now and then grab the link afterwards to see the visual demonstration. According to a recent report by Stanford's HAI institute, the average professional spends nine and a half hours per week searching for information and conducting research. That is basically an entire workday every week just looking for stuff. So what if you could cut that time in half or even more? That's exactly what perplexity can help you do. By the end of this tutorial, you'll understand exactly what perplexity is, how it differs from traditional search engines and ChatGPT, and most importantly, I'll show you in real time how to use it to find information faster and make better decisions for your business. Let's dive in. Let me start off by sharing my screen and showing you what perplexity actually is. So as you can see, I'm at perplexity.ai, which is where you can access perplexity directly. So it looks a little bit like a search engine, and that's because it essentially is, but with a major AI upgrade. Unlike traditional search engines like Google that give you a list of links to sort through, perplexity uses AI to analyze information from across the web and generate a complete summarized answer to your question. And unlike ChatGPT, perplexity actively searches the web to provide up-to-date information with sources. I think we've all probably experienced having ChatGPT hallucinate and make up information on us. It's never fun. Perplexity was founded in August of 2022, and as of early 2024, it had over 10 million monthly active users. The company recently raised$73.6 million in funding led by IVP, with the involvement of notable investors, including Jeff Bezos and NVIDIA. This puts their valuation at around$520 million. So this is definitely a company to watch. When you first get to perplexity, it's going to walk you through what to expect. It's going to tell you that answers are always accurate and always cited. It's going to promise to give you a citation in every response. Very reassuring. It's going to offer to upgrade you to Pro, which is$20 a month, very similar to Claude Pro or ChatGPT Pro. With the free account, you can continue and get unlimited free searches, three pro searches per day, the fast free AI model, and you can upload up to three files per day. The difference with the professional level is that you get to unlock the full capabilities of perplexity and enjoy the new, latest and greatest features as they are added. This includes unlimited free searches, up to 300 pro searches per day. You can choose a smarter ai. You can use deep seek R1, OpenAI o3-mini, Claude 3.7 sonnet, sonar or more. You can upload unlimited files. You can search for your files in spaces, and you have custom knowledge hubs and collaborative spaces. So if you are just getting started, check it out in the free version, and if you really love it, you can always upgrade to pro at a later time. And then finally, it's always worth noting that there is a really great mobile app for both Apple and Android. So once you get to the main search, it is very similar to if you are using ChatGPT or Claude. You can enter your query or your search into the main search box right in the middle, and over on the left hand side, you'll see that you can start a new thread. Go home, go to discover, go to spaces, or go to the library. You'll also find that all of your past searches will appear on the left hand side. Again, very similar if you're using ChatGPT or Claude already. All right, let's see perplexity in action by running some searches. So as you can see, just by clicking within the box, it's already giving me some of the things that people are searching for. Some of the top searches as of the time that I'm recording this episode include: Trump's new tariffs announced tomorrow. Myanmar earthquake death toll update, Hooters filing for bankruptcy, Wisconsin Supreme Court race spending. Eurozone inflation falls to 2.2%. So these are all, and you can see with a little arrow pointing up to the left. These are all trending searches that people are openly searching for. SpaceX's Polar Orbit Mission OpenAI secures$40 billion SoftBank funding. let's Look for OpenAI Secures$40 billion SoftBank funding. So if I click on that, it's going to give me the answer and it's going to cite all of the sources across the top. It's giving me a source from Yahoo. It's giving me a source from Capacity Media. It's giving me a source from Euro News, and then it's got six other sources. And it's giving me all of the information and it's also giving me a, people also ask down at the bottom. Now if you are doing research, these are also phenomenal things to look at. How will OpenAI use the$40 billion in funding? What are the main goals of the Stargate project? How does this funding round impact open AI's valuation? What role will SoftBank play in open AI's future? How does this funding compare to other major tech investments? Just like we've talked about in prior episodes where I've talked about keyword research or SEO, looking at similar questions that people also ask can give you other ideas for content end as well as keywords. So by looking at not only the primary question, but the secondary questions, these are phenomenal ways to find, content ideas. But most importantly, when you're on here and you start looking at the sources. You have total trust that the information that you're getting is valid, which I know is an ongoing issue with ChatGPT and even sometimes Claude, that it tends to take creative liberties with information sometimes. So with perplexity, you have eliminated that issue because it is providing you the sources and linking directly to the other articles. You have the ability also to export the answer as well as share the link or rewrite it. And when you have the ability to rewrite it, you can rewrite it using a variety of different AI tools, including Sonar, which is a perplexity tool, GPT-4o, which is openAI or ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, which is Google. I'll have another episode on that soon, and so it allows you to export the information from this search into multiple AI tools, which is really, really cool. A study by the Reuters Institute found that 65% of professionals are concerned about the reliability of information from AI systems without clear sourcing. Perplexity directly addresses this concern by showing exactly where its information comes from. Now, let's look at another key feature, the different search modes. Perplexity offers different ways to search. There's the web feature. This searches across the entire internet. There's also focus. This lets you focus on specific types of sources like academic writing or news. There are collections. These are curated sources on specific topics. There's pro. This uses their most powerful AI model. Like I mentioned earlier, if you are on the free plan, you have three pro searches per day. So, let's see how to do this. When you're on the main home search page, you click on the Little Globe. And let it know what type of search you'd like to do. So you can do a web search, an academic search where it's gonna search through academic papers or a social search where it can go through discussions and opinions and just let it know what type of search you want to do. You can also click to do deep research. If you're on the free plan, you have three deep research searches per day, and if you're on the pro plan you can also click pro on or off to do three enhanced queries remaining per day if you have the free plan. So you can toggle all of these on and off to let it know what type of search you'd like to do. So for example, if I wanted to do an academic search than the little graduation cap will pop up to let it know that now I'm doing a web search and an academic search, and if I click on deep research, that will turn that teal color to let me know that I'm also doing a deep research. And then I can type in my query and it will give me my results. So let's see what we're going to search for here. So what I have typed into the search field is impact of evergreen content on small business sales, because I have selected deep research and also because I have. Put on the academic focus, it has actually let me know. Deep research takes up to 30 minutes to thoroughly research, analyze, and reflect. It is also putting up information to let me know. I have found several articles discussing the impact of evergreen content on small business sales, highlighting how it can lead to increased organic traffic and brand authority. It's updating it as I'm reading, which is really cool. Bottom line, it's taking, it's gonna take about 30 minutes to do the full amount of work for me, but that 30 minutes is so valuable because that's 30 minutes that I'm not. Doing that work, right? So in that 30 minutes I can set it and forget it. I can go work on my own business and do other stuff that I can't have AI do for me, and then in 30 minutes I can come back and I'm going to have a treasure trove of information that I can then go through and apply to my business. In this case, I'll be able to take this content and apply it directly to my course AI Evergreen content machine. So this is going to be valuable and will probably save me dozens and dozens of hours, and I'll be able to turn this into content that applies directly to my course. So I am super excited to see what it comes up with, and I'm able to do that all on the free plan. I have three deep research and three pro tasks per day. So if you use those really strategically, then you don't even need to upgrade to the paid plan. Now let's do a side by side comparison of perplexity with ChatGPT to see how they handle the same questions differently. I've got ChatGPT open in one tab and perplexity in another. I. According to a benchmark study conducted by AI researchers at Cornell Tech, Perplexity responses contain 23% more up-to-date information than ChatGPT When asked about recent events or trends, this is because perplexity actively searches the web for the latest information, while ChatGPT is often limited to what it learned during training. So let's start with a question about a recent event. What were the key tech announcements at CES this year? So here are the results. As you can see, perplexity has given us quite the list about the key tech announcements at CES. They've given us artificial intelligence innovations, personal computing, display technology, gaming hardware, smart home, quantum computing and robotics, automotive technology. They've included the"people also ask" list of questions, and then they've also given us all of the sources, which are all active links, so that if we're interested in any of this information, we can link right to those articles and continue reading. I would say that this is probably the biggest difference. Here is the ChatGPT response. They've also broken it down into artificial intelligence and computing, consumer electronics, automotive technology, robotics and smart home health and sustainability, including sources which is great, as sometimes ChatGPT does not include sources. In this case it did, which is fantastic. This is a pretty black and white example because it is something that has a lot of sources on the internet. With tech announcements at CES. I have found when I'm looking for examples of something for maybe a blog post or a podcast or something else, if I don't explicitly ask ChatGPT For sources, oftentimes it does not include sources and that is where we enter at the gray area where ChatGPT sometimes will make up information. Whereas perplexity will not make up information and will always include the sources. For this example ChatGPT did a great job and included the sources because there are tons and tons of examples of announcements at CES and it was able to remember to include the sources. Let's try another example. Let's ask them both. What are the pros and cons of using AI tools for content creation? Now this is an example where ChatGPT has not given us any sources. Because the only question I asked were, what are the pros and cons of using AI tools for content creation? So it has given me a list, massive time saver, consistent output, SEO optimization support, great for repurposing, affordable scale, eliminating the where do I start feeling, and then a list of cons. And it's also summarized bottom line, AI is your content assistant, not your replacement. However, there are no sources. This is just ChatGPT giving me a pros and cons list if I want ChatGPT to include direct sources. I now have to go back and forth with ChatGPT and say, please provide sources, please provide examples, and do a little bit of back and forth in order to get that exact output that I want. Now, if I flip over and look at perplexity. It has given me, again, 21 sources. It's given me all of the sources right at the top. It's giving me the pros and cons list, and the content overall is similar, cost effectiveness, personalization, SEO, optimization, consistency, accessibility. So the overall pros and cons list are probably, you know, relatively similar just from scanning through, but I have more confidence in the content coming out of perplexity because it's pulled together this list from 21 sources instead of just making it up from ChatGPT. So overall, I would use the information from perplexity because it's backed by 21 sources and it has that always helpful list of"people also ask," which gives you so many more ideas for additional content. Also, I love that you can export as a PDF. Well, you can export as a markdown, as a.docx or a PDF. So instead of having to constantly cut and paste, cut and paste, cut and paste into a Google Doc, it's a little bit easier to get the content out of perplexity if you are going to work on it in another form. And then you can also share the link, copy and paste. It is a little bit easier to work on it that way. So in my opinion, the format in which they structure their answers, the specificity of the examples, obviously the citation of the sources, and then overall how comprehensive the answers are, are all a little bit more comprehensive in perplexity. While both tools are impressive. You can see that they serve somewhat different purposes. Perplexity excels at providing up-to-date information, obviously citing sources transparently, answering factual questions with very specific details, and finding the latest statistics and data. Where ChatGPT is often better for creative writing tasks, generating ideas from scratch, personalized advice based on your situation, as well as longer conversations with follow up questions. A 2023 user study by usability hub found that participants were 37% more likely to trust information from perplexity compared to ChatGPT due to the visible sources and citations. In this case, the trust factor is crucial when using AI for business research and decision making. Let's do a quick overview of some of perplexity more advanced features that really set it apart from both traditional search engines and other AI tools. Feature#1 is document upload and analysis. If you have the pro version, you can upload documents for perplexity to analyze. This is similar to what we saw with Claude in our previous episode, but with the additional benefit that Perplexity can combine your document information with internet searches. Feature#2 is co-pilot for various tasks. Perplexity offers specialized co-pilots for different tasks, including writing, coding, data analysis, and even travel planning. Feature#3 is collections. Perplexity's collections feature allows you to search within curated sets of high quality sources on very specific topics. This is particularly valuable for specialized research. According to Perplexity's own data, using the collections feature increases the accuracy of responses by approximately 22% for specialized topics compared to generalized web searches. Feature#4 is the Perplexity mobile app. Perplexity also offers a mobile app that lets you search on the go. What's especially cool about this is that you can use the camera to take pictures and ask questions about what you're seeing, like identifying a plant or a landmark or a product. The mobile app has been downloaded over 1.5 million times since its launch and maintains an impressive 4.8 star rating on the app store. Now let's dive into some real world use cases. So use case#1 is obviously market research. Let's say you want to understand the current landscape of online courses in the productivity space. You could type in:"what are the top selling online courses about productivity and time management? Include price points and key features." This kind of research would typically take hours of browsing different platforms, but perplexity gives us a comprehensive overview in a matter of seconds. Use case#2 is content creation research. When creating content, finding statistics and trends is essential. So how can you use perplexity? You could type in something like:"what are the latest statistics about email marketing open rates by industry? Include data from the last 12 months." Perplexity can help you pull data from multiple sources and present it in an organized way. This makes creating well researched content so much faster, and if you find that the data you're getting isn't what you're looking for, don't be afraid to go back and push back on perplexity and say, actually, can you please provide information for small businesses or information for businesses with 20 to 50 employees. If you are looking for something specific, just ask. You don't ask, you don't get According to a study by Orbit Media content that includes specific statistics, gets 149% more social shares, then content without data points. So using perplexity makes it much easier to find these valuable statistics. Use case#3 is competitive analysis. Perplexity is also your game changing tool for researching your competitors. You could type in something like:"what are the main features and pricing of the top five email marketing platforms for small businesses." This will give you a quick overview of the competitive landscape without having to visit multiple websites and compile the information yourself. Just think for a minute how many hours that will save you. Pretty impressive, right? Use case#4 is problem solving. So how can perplexity help you? If you are having an issue with your email deliverability, all of a sudden you go from having great email deliverability and open rates to terrible. You could ask perplexity:"what are some common reasons why email deliverability and open rates might suddenly drop, and how can I fix these issues?" The structured source-backed answers are going to provide you actionable advice that you can actually implement, right away. Based off of extensive use of perplexity, here are some pro tips that might help you get better results. Tip#1: be specific in your questions. The more specific your question, the better the answer that you are likely to get. If you are vague and you ask for email marketing tips. You're gonna get really vague answers, but if you ask for really specific tips for small marketing and help with increasing your open rates and your delivery rates and your click-through rates, you will get really specific results. Tip#2: use follow up questions effectively. As I mentioned just a few minutes ago, if you are not getting the exact, really juicy results that you are looking for, don't be afraid to follow up and ask for more. Perplexity maintains context between searches, meaning it remembers what you asked before. You can ask follow up questions to dig a little deeper. Tip#3 is to choose the right search mode. As I showed earlier in this episode, you can do a web search, an academic search, a social search, deep research, pro search. So use the right search for the right types of questions. Use a web search if you're doing a general question, an academic search for research based questions. Don't forget how to toggle through, and that you can also stack the different question types on top of each other, and you'll get really juicy results if you do that. Tip#4 is to save your valuable searches, especially if you are on the free plan. You get three deep research and three pro searches per day, so make the most of them. According to perplexity user data, people who utilize multiple search modes get 34% more comprehensive answers than those who stick with the default mode, which is the web search. As with the example that I showed where I was doing research for my own AI evergreen content machine course, where I stacked deep research with research with a web search, and it's still going, as I'm recording the rest of this episode, it's still providing content and I know I'm going to have some amazing content to work with because it is still plugging along and pulling some really, really juicy content for me. Next up I want to talk about limitations to be aware of because obviously while perplexity is an incredibly powerful tool, it's important to understand what it cannot do. The first limitation to be aware of is that source quality does vary. Perplexity is only as good as the sources it finds. So if you have a very niche topic, the sources that it is pulling from might be limited. So be aware to always check the sources that perplexity is pulling from. Limitation#2 is the potential for bias. Like all AI systems for perplexity can reflect biases in the information it finds online. A peer-reviewed study published in AI ethics Journal found that search-based AI systems like perplexity can reduce certain types of bias compared to closed language models, but they may still amplify popular viewpoints from the web. Limitation#3 is complex reasoning. For questions requiring complex reasoning or personal judgment, perplexity might not be the best tool. Remember, you always still need to include your own human thought process and your own personal opinion. Limitation#4 is that you still need human verification. Despite the sources, it is still very important to verify crucial information. As I always talk about, AI is your unpaid intern, Chad and you are the CEO of your business. So always, always, always triple check before you publish anything that was created using AI. And there you have it, a comprehensive walkthrough of Perplexity from basic features to advanced strategies. As you've seen, Perplexity offers a powerful alternative to both traditional search engines and other AI tools like ChatGPT. What makes Perplexity particularly valuable is how it bridges the gap between search engines and AI assistance. You get that real-time information access of a search engine with the summarization and natural language capabilities of an AI tool. According to a Deloitte digital report, AI powered search engines like perplexity can reduce research time by up to 70% compared to traditional search methods. If you found this tutorial helpful, make sure to check out the full video demonstration on my YouTube channel. The link is in the show notes. And don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. It helps other tech curious entrepreneurs to find the show. This is part of our ongoing AI alternatives miniseries, where we're exploring powerful AI tools beyond just ChatGPT. For more in-depth training on using AI tools in your business, check out my AI Evergreen Content Machine course. I'll show you my complete system for creating content that works for your business around the clock, including how to integrate tools like perplexity into your research workflow. The link is in the show notes. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of Tech Savvy 101. I'll see you really soon.