An AI search engine can effectively improve traditional search engines by using AI and machine learning. This technology reached the mainstream with the introduction of ChatGPT, but many similar AI-powered search engines entered the market afterward. However, what are they exactly, and how do they work? Below, we answer these questions and list some of the top AI search engines available today.
Contents What is an AI search engine? How does an AI-based search engine work? AI-driven search engine vs traditional search engine The top AI-powered search engines Komo Microsoft Bing You.com Google Bard ChatGPT Waldo Perplexity AI Andi Yep NeevaAI
What is an AI search engine?
An AI search engine is a search platform that uses machine learning models and artificial intelligence to provide results. With the help of other AI-based algorithms and natural language processing, it can understand more complex search queries and provide improved, more relevant, and accurate results to users. Moreover, an AI search engine automatically generates more accurate search results and detailed, unique answers to complex questions. Instead of relying on keywords, these tools examine your queries and check your preferences, past interactions, interests, and behavior to provide a personalized answer that follows your requirements.
How does an AI-based search engine work?
AI search engines work similarly to their traditional counterparts but employ additional AI technologies, algorithms, and deep learning to understand queries better and offer improved results. Here’s what a typical AI search engine does: An AI search engine begins its search by indexing content from the web. Once a user types in a question, the tool uses natural language processing to understand the meaning and intent of the query. The engine determines the relevance of its indexed items to the query and assigns a relevancy score to each item. The AI-based search engine provides the most relevant results at the top and goes down the list based on relevancy scores. Moreover, machine learning models enable AI search engines to improve based on historical data and offer more relevant content and more accurate results after every interaction.
AI-driven search engine vs traditional search engine
Let’s review the key differences between AI and traditional search engines: AI search engines can understand natural language queries and content better than regular search engines can. Where regular search engines use only words and phrases to determine their results, AI tools consider the context and actual meaning behind the question. AI-based search tools can cover advanced features like image search or voice search. Traditional search engines work from scratch with every query, while their AI counterparts can learn from past interactions and improve over time as a result of machine learning. AI search engines can answer complex questions and longer texts instead of being limited to simple queries. Unlike traditional search engines, most AI-based ones offer customized and personalized search experiences. AI search engines can interact conversationally and handle follow-up questions, whereas conventional search engines can only answer queries. {SHORTCODES.blogRelatedArticles}
The top AI-powered search engines
To help you choose an AI search engine best suited to your needs, we’ve found 10 examples you can review below.
Komo
Komo is an AI-driven search engine that focuses on speed and privacy. It has three main features — Ask, Explore, and Search. Ask lets you brainstorm and discuss topics, Explore gives trending topics from the community, and Search works like a regular search engine. It is free and simple to use, comes with no ads, and offers more personalized search outcomes. Unlike other search engines, it generates answers and the sites it used to create them, but you can still get standard search results.
Microsoft Bing
Besides regular text and voice-based search with accurate speech recognition, Bing also has a full AI-powered chat feature that wants to be your copilot on the web. It can refine search results and provide you with a more complete answer. Users are free to fully interact with it or ask for more details. Bing uses the next-generation OpenAI language model, which was specifically designed for searching. Naturally, there is still some room for improvement, but it’s an improvement over older AI search engines and is constantly getting better. The service is available to everyone free of charge, but you have to be signed in to your Microsoft account to get more than four query results per day.
You.com
You.com is an AI search engine that aims to give users more control over their searches. It was designed by former Salesforce employees Richard Socher and Bryan McCann, who wanted to offer a search engine that values users’ privacy. The tool provides immediate answers, and it’s free to use. The subscription-based YouPro service is the better option, though, because it uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 to give more detailed and accurate answers. Plus, it comes with additional features.
Google Bard
Google Bard is Google’s response to OpenAI ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing Chat that resulted from ChatGPT. It’s still experimental, but it’s entirely free to use. The tool can answer questions with more details than regular search results, generate texts, translate content, help you with your tasks, and much more. The main benefit of Google Bard is that it’s already connecting to other Google services as an extension, so if you’re a big Google user, Bard can come in handy.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is the most popular AI chatbot and search engine, mainly because it was the first to start this new way of exploring the web. The downside is that the free version is effectively only a chatbot lacking real-time updates, so its answers are limited and can easily be wrong. The paid version uses live data and is, consequently, more accurate. If you want ChatGPT explained fully, you’ll need to read more detailed reviews. However, remember that it works like most other tools on this list while also offering functions like understanding handwritten documents, data analysis, and more.
Waldo
Waldo aims to differentiate itself by allowing users to fine-tune their searches. It also strives to provide answers a lot faster and offers numerous features like publishing and exporting Google Docs and even compiling research into a document you can share with others. It’s designed for freelancers, teams, and enterprise users. However, since it’s a paid tool, you can only use it for free with the limited free trial.
Perplexity AI
Perplexity AI aims to eliminate generic search results by generating domain-specific answers gathered from several pages. It provides an answer in the form of a summary and always cites sources you can check. This makes it different from most AI search engines and an interesting choice if you want to search a specific domain instead of the whole web. You can use it for free, but there’s also a paid plan that uses OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Andi
Andi is a chatbot and search engine rolled into one. It uses AI technology to offer more comprehensive search results. The tool gathers data from various sources and often presents a single result together with its own explanation. It can answer your questions, search the web, and even summarize or explain information. The search engine is free to use, and its goal is to streamline search results and improve the productivity of its users. It uses natural language processing but sometimes fails to understand that you’re asking a question instead of looking for a search result.
Yep
Yep is a revenue-sharing search engine that uses AI technologies to offer better search results. It specializes in visual search, uses AI to understand and analyze images, and provides search results based on complex user queries. It was developed by Ahrefs, a popular provider of SEO tools. They went for a more minimalist approach rather than bombarding you with added features, which can be the case for standard Google search results. The creators get 90% of advertising earnings, while you can use Yep for free.
NeevaAI
NeevaAI is an ad-free AI-powered search engine that focuses on user privacy. Despite this approach, it can still understand your preferences and behavior and adapt accordingly. Snowflake acquired the tool in May 2023, and the company plans to incorporate it into its Data Cloud to accelerate searches. These are just ten examples of some of the top-rated AI search engines on the web, but there are many others. And more are sure to follow as the technology keeps on evolving and getting better.