Notes on Chatgpt Search: Better than Perplexity?
Posted by SunilKumarDash@reddit | LocalLLaMA | View on Reddit | 30 comments
It’s been a few weeks since OpenAI released the updated search feature on Chatgpt, and I have been using it a lot recently as it comes included with the Plus benefits. I have also been using Perplexity on and off lately.
So, I wrote a comparative overview of both products and tested them with various search queries I use daily. These include general searches and finding nearby outlets, products, and stock information.
Check out the complete blog post for a full analysis. I've also discussed what it means for the future of search.
Here is what I liked about the Chatgpt Search
- The search has been improved. The search precision is better.
- I like the interface better than others; it doesn't crowd the chat interface and is easy on the eyes.
What I didn’t like about the product?
- You can’t turn off the web search. So, you are stuck with whether you like it or not.
- This is controversial, as it can explicitly access your IP and ISP details. This may not sit right with some users. However, it helps in personalised search.
What’s for Perplexity?
As OpenAI is marketing, it is not currently a threat to Google search but can pose an existential threat to Perplexity. For the search, I liked it better, and the fact that Chatgpt is widely popular will make it challenging for Perplexity to penetrate further. However, Perplexity is great for real-time searches like live scores, stock prices, weather updates, etc.
But I think Perplexity has to offer more and innovate harder to stay competitive. What do you think about the new Search feature? Was it any better, and what do you think about Perplexity’s future?
JacketHistorical2321@reddit
Should be using a VPN to protect IP anyway
Feeling-Advisor4060@reddit
Only if you are living in shite countries like south korea and china.
quentinvespero@reddit
I've been using chatGPT search alongside Perplexity this last week and I've been pretty disappointed, for me I still consider it being somehow unreliable compared to Perplexity when it comes to providing factual and precise informations 🤷🏻♂️
Also, it may be solved soon, but I feel like for now, when turning on the web search feature, it doesn't follow very well the personalized prompt that you set in your chatGPT profile, which is a bit annoying for me.
SandboChang@reddit
I think the search is kind of flawed: it easily get stuck on just one or two of the keyword of my prompt.
For example, when I ask it to search web for feedbacks on a particular type of food when I was traveling at a famous tourist spot, it somehow replied with how people like the place, without any mention of the food itself.
What’s worse is when I tried a follow up question, it can still get stuck and reply with the exact same thing endlessly.
TomFichtnerLeipzig@reddit
Good effort in writing this comparative blog post.
I'm looking forward to a new revision with a wider array of tests and better presentation.
Also, the tangent about IP addresses can probably be trimmed from the article, as it is somewhat off-topic.
Technical_Formal5982@reddit
honestly the new search feature on chatgpt hasn't helped me find anything i wanted to find for research purposes and i have to resort to using google scholar... always disappointed when i open the links. i try to search on perplexity & searchGPT for various research articles and can't find anything remotely meeting my criteria -- i do notice that perplexity seems to hallucinate more than chatGPT though, probably because i'm using the free version. i love using chatgpt but for search i still have to rely on google and manually going through links for research purposes
the_koom_machine@reddit
Have you attempted "search journal articles" when restricting to actual research? I find it to helpful when searching for actual evidence. Previously, merely citing "search the medical literature" yielded wikipedia citations...lol.
Technical_Formal5982@reddit
i would ask it to search for evidence-based journals or articles but i can try using the word 'journal' to see if it makes a difference -t hanks! i get so frustrated when it pulls up like press releases with the topics I was searching for
Alex01100010@reddit
Perplexity will die. I have both Perplexity Pro and ChatGPT pro. And the ChatGPT search functionality has already taken 90% of my use cases from perplexity. If they get a bit better, perplexity is dead to me. I don’t want to pay for two models.
SunilKumarDash@reddit (OP)
That's the sentiment for a lot of users. I wouldn't keep two subscriptions, either.
AdHominemMeansULost@reddit
im using both extensively and ChatGPT gives me the wrong info if its a niche subject. Perplexity doesn't.
SunilKumarDash@reddit (OP)
Thats interesting. I tend to use Google more for Niche cases.
eposnix@reddit
Sure you can. Just go to 'customize ChatGPT' and untick web search.
ironic_cat555@reddit
I rarely use Perplexity for search, I use it as a full replacement for ChatGPT. I can set it to "writing" mode and switch Between GPT 4o Claude Sonnett, Perplexity's LlaMA variant and Grok. I almost always just use Claude Sonnett. GLT 4o seems pretty good too.
Perplexirh is better than ChatGPT because I get more AI options. It also let's you organize and search threads in a way ChatGPT never used to let you do, I don't know if that's changed.
That said I assume Perplexity won't make it long term since they are stuck reselling other people's models and they have no valuable tech of their own unless they develop something special like a super superior Llama variant or something.
darth_chewbacca@reddit
I've got the free uberOne 1year of Perplexity and I'm really impressed, but I do have some FOMO for not having ChatGPT search.
I like the "spaces" feature of perplexity where I can essentially set different system prompts for things like News analysis, technical research, and the like.
I also like that I can switch out models, so I can have different spaces with different models.
Inkbot_dev@reddit
Don't worry about the FOMO. Every single model that people are using today are very likely the worst models they will ever use for the rest of their lives. Honestly though, the OpenAI search is alright...ish. It's pulled back totally irrelevant sites to attempt to answer questions found on the official docs for X framework (which I mentioned to the model) on way too many occasions for me to use it seriously.
If I have to go find the exact URL or section of the docs to manually feed to the LLM because it's too stupid to find it and filter out absolute junk noise, it's not very useful to me as a feature.
SatoshiNotMe@reddit
There's open source versions, the most polished of which seems to be perplexica
harrro@reddit
This might shock you but literally every website you visit can view your IP and get your ISP and location from that alone.
Perplexity is screwed really -- it's just a matter of time before Google matches Perplexity's feature-set (probably a few months away at most) just like OpenAI has done.
OpenAI has the model advantage while Google has the search data advantage. Perplexity has neither.
darth_chewbacca@reddit
I have to disagree with this. The reason why I find Perplexity better than Google is due to the unbiased search results. Google will always prioritize ads and paid searches as that is their golden goose; and so long as they do this, I'll prefer something else.
I've heard rumours that Perplexity will add ads, which is what will kill Perp (or ChatGPT being better at Perps core competency).
JacketHistorical2321@reddit
And you don't think openai isn't going to do the same?? Lol
Spoiler... They 100% will
darth_chewbacca@reddit
I might have said something like that... yeah... looks like I did. LOL
Inkbot_dev@reddit
They meant OpenAI would also eventually add ads (possibly embedded into the answers by the model) to their offering. They weren't talking about if they would match Perplexity in features.
foofork@reddit
Perplexity just added shopping and direct click to buy (which is unique). So they’ll be innovative…who knows though about ads (probably for a free tier).
darth_chewbacca@reddit
I hope they don't start selling me shoes when I ask "what is the distance between London and Berlin"
If they do... Im out.
If they start offering me the best prices on like... something I want to buy, thats pretty cool. Better not lie to me though.
mikael110@reddit
Yeah it always amuses me to see people act shocked when they discover a website showing their IP, as if this is a security compromise of some sort.
Your IP Address is literally used to route traffic to you, websites cannot send you any data without it.
LatestLurkingHandle@reddit
https://chat.mistral.ai now searches the web, free for now, puts more pressure on Perplexity
ra2eW8je@reddit
just tried but i won't be using this feature as it does not cite which sources it got the answer from
_Cromwell_@reddit
And you can turn the search on and off as well, which was one of the things op complained about. I haven't had much time to play around with it but I haven't booked and will start.
Mr_Hyper_Focus@reddit
I think perplexity is toast. ChatGPT search was really the nail in the coffin, and if that doesn’t do it, whatever google releases will.
I think they know this, and that’s why perplexity is milking the advertisement cow at the moment.
z_3454_pfk@reddit
Most websites are requesting no indexing of their sites and are blocking the scraping backend through services like cloudflare.
If you request a summary of lots of news websites now, both SGPT and PPLX both are starting to return that they can’t access the websites so both are kinda screwed. Especially now that people know there’s value in their data.