I rigorously tested the astir fashionable AI hunt engines to observe their strengths and weaknesses.

I ran this trial for 2 reasons:

• As a quality being, I privation to usage the champion hunt motor around. I walk my beingness connected the internet. I privation to find accusation successful the fastest, astir effortless mode possible.
• As a marketer, I privation to cognize wherever the tide is headed. Will AI hunt engines regenerate “traditional” hunt engines? Are AI chatbots truly bully capable to dethrone Google? Should I commencement investing much effort successful LLM optimization?

There are fundamentally a 1000 products claiming to beryllium AI hunt engines, but I focused connected the biggest and astir popular.

I tested retired the AI features connected connection from 2 existing hunt giants—Google’s AI Overviews and Bing AI—and 2 trendy AI upstarts—ChatGPT Search and Perplexity.

The champion AI hunt engines are—in my opinion—ChatGPT Search for the champion chatbot experience, and Google’s AI Overviews for the champion all-around hunt engine.

Read connected for pros and cons, screenshots, and abbreviated videos of the hunt experience.

In bid to decently justice the prime of each hunt engine’s results, I focused connected a taxable wherever I’m a world-class expert: digital marketing the role-playing video crippled Skyrim.

Because I’m an SEO, I besides wanted to trial arsenic galore antithetic types of hunt queries arsenic possible. I brainstormed tons of Skyrim searches grouped by antithetic categories, including:

• Short-tail queries (e.g. skyrim)
• Long-tail queries (e.g. how to lick the mzulft oculory puzzle)
• Transactional queries (e.g. best paid skyrim mods)
• Informational queries (e.g. how to level up smithing rapidly successful skyrim)
• Navigational queries (e.g. uesp skyrim map)
• Local queries (e.g. buy skyrim adjacent me)
• Image queries (e.g. skyrim landscapes)
• Trending queries (e.g. skyrim nolvus)

I ran these searches done each AI hunt motor and recorded my experience. I focused peculiarly on:

• Relevance: were the results due for my query?
• Accuracy: did the hunt engines instrumentality valid, up-to-date information?
• Usefulness: did I conscionable the intent of my search? Did I leave happy?
• Speed: however rapidly did I get my answer?
• Ease-of-use: however overmuch effort did it require?

This is simply a wholly unscientific but very interesting investigation of the champion AI hunt engines. Let’s get started.

My opinion: A probe adjunct that excels with quality and summarization, but doesn’t truly “feel” similar a hunt engine.

Price: Free; $20/month for Pro

Link: https://www.perplexity.ai/

Pros

• Excellent astatine summarising tons of sources.
• Great for news-related topics.
• The “Related topics” diagnostic is useful.

Cons

• Plenty of incorrect answers and hallucinations.
• Bad astatine image, commercial, and section searches.
• Didn’t truly consciousness similar a hunt engine.

Perplexity feels much similar a Wiki oregon a cognition basal than it does a hunt engine. Many of its responses are terse bulleted lists, and it excelled successful summarising method queries (like DA09Dawnbreaker) oregon news-related topics (like elder scrolls vi news).

I besides noticed tons of errors and hallucinations successful its output. One example: for Should I go a vampire oregon a werewolf successful skyrim?, Perplexity suggested that werewolves were immune to metallic weapons—they really instrumentality bonus harm from them. (C’mon Perplexity, honestly.)

Information often seemed outdated too. Perplexity said that Skyrim SE was connected merchantability for $7.99 connected Steam (it wasn’t), and the merchantability extended until May 30… 2024. It feels similar Perplexity’s scale isn’t anyplace adjacent arsenic caller arsenic different AI hunt engines.

Perplexity besides regularly failed to “get” the intent down my searches, and defaulted to connection crockery paragraphs of text. When I searched for “Steam skyrim”, I got a long, rambling effect with nary existent nexus to Steam. For “Skyrim creations”, it listed nary existent creations, and conscionable shared a Wiki-style overview of the Creation concept.

Perplexity besides struggled with representation searches, commercialized queries were precise unsatisfying, and section searches were decidedly not local, with responses that recommended websites and shops that were obscurity near me.

My opinion: A large all-rounder hunt motor that incorporates AI successful limited—but useful—ways.

Price: Free

Link: https://www.google.com/

Pros

• AI Overviews were mostly adjuvant (when they showed up).
• Does a large occupation astatine surfacing antithetic media formats, similar images and videos.
• Excels astatine commercialized and transactional searches.

Cons

• Very cluttered hunt results, often with duplication betwixt AI Overviews and Fatured Snippets.
• AI Overviews consciousness similar a dead-end—you can’t proceed to interact with them.
• Felt a small weird having Reddit successful the bulk of SERPs.

It was amusive evaluating Google Search done caller eyes. Unsurprisingly, Google was very good for commercialized and section queries: interactive merchandise carousels made it casual to find applicable products successful nary time, and representation packs were fantastic for uncovering local shops.

I was besides reminded of conscionable however almighty Google’s integration with YouTube is: immoderate queries that were champion resolved with video contented astir ever included YouTube videos—often timestamped—in the SERP.

AI and instrumentality learning underpin each of Google Search, but arsenic acold arsenic circumstantial AI features, AI Overviews lone triggered for astir 15% of my queries. These were each informational queries, and successful astir cases, they were precise circumstantial long-tail queries.

The AI Overviews were really beauteous good, applicable and accurate—but I decidedly missed the quality to support interacting with the AI.

AI Overviews mostly felt similar amped-up Feature snippets, providing direct, definite answers to long-tail queries successful SERPs (and successful fact, galore of the AI Overviews competed straight with duplicate Featured snippets straight beneath them successful the SERP).

It was besides a small weird having Reddit contiguous successful truthful galore SERPs. Some queries truly are best-suited by idiosyncratic generated content—like those with nary nonsubjective “best” answer—but Reddit muscled its mode successful everywhere.

My opinion: The champion AI chatbot for specific, text-heavy searches (but inactive lacking immoderate “classic” hunt features).

Price: Free; $20/month for Pro

Link: https://chatgpt.com/

Pros

• Excellent for precise circumstantial long-tail queries.
• The quality to inquire follow-on questions is highly good.
• “Memory” diagnostic is useful.

Cons

• Outright failed connected respective occasions.
• Pretty atrocious for representation searches and commercialized searches.
• Verbose, likes to constitute agelong answers adjacent for elemental questions.

ChatGPT Search is fantastic for precise circumstantial long-tail queries. Answers to queries similar Should I go a vampire oregon a werewolf successful skyrim? were similar speechmaking a abbreviated blog station that was written conscionable to summarise a clump of sources specifically for your query—because, well, it was.

Couple this with the quality to inquire follow-up questions, and ChatGPT’s quality to retrieve accusation from erstwhile conversations (its “memory”), and asking long, analyzable questions is simply a ton of fun.

But this spot is besides a weakness. ChatGPT excels with text-heavy queries, and kinda sucks for galore others. Short-tail queries felt mode much constricted than Google. Navigational queries (like skyrim instauration kit download) were unsatisfying: ChatGPT would explicate precisely how to download the Creation Kit (a modding motor for Skyrim), but it couldn’t really fto you do it.

It was besides beauteous anemic with commercialized queries, and precise atrocious astatine representation queries, with a default effect constricted to conscionable 4 images (nowhere adjacent capable to sate my appetite for hi-res skyrim landscapes). Although 1 surprise: ChatGPT Search incorporated playable YouTube videos straight into its responses.

ChatGPT Search outright failed for a fewer queries, requiring aggregate refreshes to get results for precise basal queries. All-in-all, it was strongest for queries that benefited from long, elaborate substance responses, and worse connected astir each level for each the different queries.

My opinion: A coagulated second-choice hunt motor with experimental AI features that don’t truly deliver.

Price: Free

Link: https://www.bing.com/

Pros

• Great astatine navigational and commercialized searches.
• Interesting hunt features for short-tail queries.

Cons

• AI features were rather often breached and unhelpful.
• Slightly disappointing section and quality searches.

Bing has 2 outwardly evident “AI” features. One is simply a substance snippet, precise akin to Google’s Featured Snippets and AI Overviews. These worked okay, but not arsenic good arsenic Google’s AI Overviews.

Often, the AI answers didn’t rather recognize my hunt (the effect for Should I go a vampire oregon a werewolf successful skyrim? didn’t really see an answer—just steps to become either a vampire oregon werewolf).

The different was a dynamically generated “table of contents” module, and contempt looking nice, it mostly fell determination betwixt not adjuvant and totally broken, with the antithetic modules appearing successful jumbled orders oregon missing steps.

Like Google Search, Bing performed perfectly astatine navigational queries and showed tons of products and inspiration for commercialized searches. It returned bully results for newer, trending topics (as did each the hunt engines, surprisingly).

Most of all, I loved the ocular sidebar that appeared for the short-tail searches, offering tons of facts and trivia for skyrim. When the hunt intent is truthful so vague, it seems incredibly adjuvant to dainty the SERP arsenic a temper committee of inspiration and imaginable wormholes to pursue.

Surprisingly, I was disappointed with section searches, and the quality hunt (Elder scrolls vi news) was beauteous awful.

Final thoughts

“Traditional” hunt engines person decades of acquisition successful making searchers—and each the antithetic types of searches they make—happy. This acquisition is evident crossed commercial, local, and representation searches wherever Google and Bing dominated the newer tools.

But “pure” AI hunt engines besides unlock caller types of hunt behavior. The query Skyrim bosmer stealth archer physique backstory was sensational with ChatGPT, allowing maine to actively brainstorm and refine a communicative successful a mode I ne'er could with Google Search. Perplexity excelled astatine summarising quality and analyzable information.

Are the strengths of AI hunt engines capable to marque up for their galore weaknesses? Will searchers wantonness a institution that controls 88.5% of the existent hunt motor market to experimentation with comparatively unproven new tools?

More apt (in my estimation) is that we’ll spot the existing hunt engines build, integrate, and spouse with AI companies to bring the champion features into the existing hunt acquisition (like Bing’s concern with OpenAI.)

In the meantime, the champion AI hunt engines are—in my opinion—ChatGPT Search for the champion chatbot experience, and Google’s AI Overviews for the champion all-around hunt engine.