I've long been a fan of Google and the results it gives. It was a game changer when it launched in the mid 90's and Lycos, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo and were around; it just seemed to provide better results and people gravitated to it for its simple, clean approach and great suggestions for your given search.
But times have moved on and the era of AI is truly here, in so many ways. Google still sticks to its 10 results per page approach seemingly to appease long time users but often shoehorns some AI result above these site links. This, along with 3-4 sponsored links taking pole position (even above the AI Overview), is all starting to feel like an annoying and lackluster experience.
So, pleased with the use of Perplexity recently (see here) I've decided to make it my default search engine now. 🤩
It was very simple to do (in Chrome, will be similar approach for other browsers), I simply went here to begin:
Settings > Search Engine > Manage search engines and site search
Next to Site Search I clicked Add and set the following:
This means in the address bar I can now type @p and hit Tab or Space key and it'll show I'm going to direct my query at Perplexity and then just type your query, ie:
Hitting the Enter key does what you expect - searches at Perplexity for that query. It's worth noting there's a 2-3 second pause while it checks you're not a bot (I'm sure this will be reduced in time), but within maybe 4 seconds since sending my query it gives exactly what I wanted, with an explanation, image and video options, related searches and asks if I want to ask a follow up query:
I asked the follow up query Can you now provide it in Python and it does a similar thing to before, but this time there's no 2-3 second pause now (as I'm already on the site) and seems to return what I asked for in under a second. Pretty neat! 🌈🦄😎👍
The slight pause from hitting the site from a fresh start could be a little irratating (as a search a lot during the day), but I already know it'll be a faster choice than Google's mix of sponsored links, AI overview and sometimes lacking site links which I need to fish around in to get what I want. Perplexity seems to provide exactly what I need, all packaged up into a great response. So I'll try it as my default search engine for the foreseeable future. Sorry Google, but after 25 years of use, you're no longer my default search engine.
However, I do want options, should Perplexity not live up to my hopes. So the last change I've made is to make Perplexity the default search engine (by clicking the 3 dots next to it and choosing Make default but I'm keeping Google and DuckDuckGo as options for me, with the shortcuts @g and @d respectively:
So from here on, I can search using:
This all feels like a pretty neat setup for an AI driven, clutter feel search experience in 2025.
Hope this is helpful to you? Have you done anything similar? Let me know in the comments!
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