University of Kwazulu-Natal

The Best Ai Search Engines We Ve Tested 2025 Pcmag

Bonisiwe Shabane
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the best ai search engines we ve tested 2025 pcmag

ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini (among others) have successfully made AI chatbots mainstream and serve as viable alternatives to standard web search engines. In turn, the standard search engines from those companies (along with alternative ones) have adopted some AI elements. Bing, for example, now offers the Copilot Search feature, which shows the AI's reasoning process. Meanwhile, Google's AI Mode and AI Overviews, respectively, provide chatbot-like functionality and a summary of findings at the top of a results page. AI can greatly improve the web search experience. With standard web search, you often need to pore over multiple web pages to find the kernel of knowledge you're after.

With AI search, you often need only enter a single text prompt. Furthermore, if an initial answer isn’t quite what you're looking for, you can steer the bot in the right direction with follow-up prompts. You don’t have to keep rephrasing the same query the way you do with standard search engines or with legacy AI voice assistants, such as Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri. But we aren't focusing on Copilot in Bing or Google's various AI search features here. Instead, we are looking at search engines that run entirely on generative AI. Generative AI and chatbots typically rely on large language models (LLMs) that train on an information set with a specific cutoff date.

The search engines we highlight here also use LLMs to understand the text you enter, but rather than basing their results on a fixed knowledge base, they scan the live web for up-to-date information... The better ones even show you their sources so you can double-check them. ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini (among others) have successfully made AI chatbots mainstream and serve as viable alternatives to standard web search engines. In turn, the standard search engines from those companies (along with alternative ones) have adopted some AI elements. Bing, for example, now offers the Copilot Search feature, which shows the AI's reasoning process. Meanwhile, Google's AI Mode and AI Overviews, respectively, provide chatbot-like functionality and a summary of findings at the top of a results page.

AI can greatly improve the web search experience. With standard web search, you often need to pore over multiple web pages to find the kernel of knowledge you're after. With AI search, you often need only enter a single text prompt. Furthermore, if an initial answer isn’t quite what you're looking for, you can steer the bot in the right direction with follow-up prompts. You don’t have to keep rephrasing the same query the way you do with standard search engines or with legacy AI voice assistants, such as Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri. But we aren't focusing on Copilot in Bing or Google's various AI search features here.

Instead, we are looking at search engines that run entirely on generative AI. Generative AI and chatbots typically rely on large language models (LLMs) that train on an information set with a specific cutoff date. The search engines we highlight here also use LLMs to understand the text you enter, but rather than basing their results on a fixed knowledge base, they scan the live web for up-to-date information... The better ones even show you their sources so you can double-check them. Perplexity excels primarily in its AI-powered search capabilities but also includes many of the same functions found in standard AI chatbots. With access to multiple models, it can effectively manage tasks like creative writing, file processing, and image generation.

However, its underwhelming deep research tool and the unclear details about which model powers its media generation features can be disappointing. Overall, Perplexity is a solid option for users looking to elevate their web searches beyond what Google offers. Still, if you plan to make frequent use of comprehensive chatbot tools, ChatGPT remains our Editors' Choice, thanks to its more advanced features and richer, more detailed responses. Perplexity brands itself as an “AI-powered answer engine” and not an AI chatbot. It focuses more on AI-powered search than ChatGPT or Gemini, and its design reflects this use case. This is most noticeable when trying to have a conversation with Perplexity, as it is much less conversational than a chatbot.

That said, Perplexity allows you to chat, do deep research, generate images and videos, pen creative writing, process files, solve math problems, and voice chat, among other things, just like chatbots. If you’re a programmer, you can use Perplexity to help you code in a variety of ways. For example, Perplexity Labs can write and execute code for you. This functionality is outside the scope of this review, but you can test out its coding abilities yourself. Like chatbots, my favorite use for Perplexity is answering questions and conducting research. Often, it’s easier (and quicker) to paste my question into Perplexity than to turn it into a keyword soup, search Google, and scroll through the results until I find something relevant.

Perplexity’s in-depth research can also serve as a good starting point for learning about more complex topics, but more on that later. Regardless of whether Perplexity is an answer engine or a chatbot, it sometimes gets things wrong, and it does so confidently. Accordingly, I don’t recommend using Perplexity’s answers as your only point of reference. For important questions, make sure to click through to the sources Perplexity cites and conduct further research. A judge ruled that Google created an illegal monopoly because it paid partners to make its search engine the default on phones and mobile browsers. And the bad news continues: The company recently changed its policy to allow tracking you with fingerprinting.

But you don’t have to use Google (though it's hard to avoid the code it places on nearly every website you visit). Alternative search engines often give you more privacy and sometimes come with other benefits as well, such as specialized search tools and commitments to charitable donations. The difference in quality of results between Google and other search engines has become a non-issue, too. We've tested the top alternative search engines and included the ones worthy of consideration below. We focus on standard web search engines here, but you can also read about the new world of generative AI search. AOL is still in the web portal game, giving you a start page that shows curated hot topics in the entertainment, finance, food, health, news, and sports categories.

But you can use it just as a web search engine as well. This offering features a slick interface, optional content filtering of potentially offensive material, and good image search filters. It's not the most private search in the world since activity tracking and location are on by default, but you can disable those from a Privacy Dashboard as long as you're signed in with... Yahoo now owns AOL, so your web results will likely be the same in both; they just have different interface tools. Coming from the innovative creators of the privacy-focused Brave web browser, Brave Search claims “unmatched privacy.” In my testing using the EFF’s Cover Your Tracks Tools, Brave was the most private browser, so the... When I enter a search in Brave Search, my ad-and-tracker blocker, uBlock, doesn’t report anything to block.

Brave gets its results both from its web crawling index and “anonymous API calls to third parties.” Brave now gives you a choice of AI-powered or standard web results via its Answer With AI... A Discussions section on the result page features content from Reddit and the like. Finally, Brave's Goggles feature lets you filter your results with parameters like No Celebrity content or News from the Left or Right. The biggest name in private search deserves your attention. DuckDuckGo (DDG) has a simple privacy policy: “We don’t collect or share any of your personal information.” The search interface is simple, too, and results are on target, though they lack the extensive info... DDG lets you search for images, videos, news, maps, and shopping results.

A nice touch is that DDG adds more header options depending on the search term, such as Definition, Meanings, Nutrition, and Recipes. The search service now includes two AI features: Assist, for a generated answer summary for your query, and Duck.ai Chat. The first is similar to AI features in Bing, Brave, and Google. It summarizes web results to give you an answer at the top of the page so that you don't have to hunt down that nugget of information on multiple websites. Duck.ai lets you have a conversation with a chatbot that doesn't use your input for training. 'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?

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When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, the AI chatbot soared in popularity because people were amazed at its ability to respond to any question with conversational and concise answers. However, ChatGPT lacked one major feature -- access to current information. AI-powered search engines emerged to fill that gap. Blog > I Tried the 9 Best AI Search Engines: Here’s What Works Google has dominated the search engine market for decades. But the rapid adoption of generative AI has quickly presented a threat to Google and traditional search engines.

You don't need to rely on Google as your only search engine now. AI-powered search engines are becoming more popular by providing users with more intuitive, conversational, and context-aware ways to access information. A recent Semrush study suggests that AI search visitors could exceed traditional search visitors by 2028. Despite the growing popularity of AI, an Exploding Topics study found that 42.1% of people had experienced misleading content in AI Overviews. These findings led me to learn more about the AI search engine space to determine which platform is the best. A judge ruled that Google created an illegal monopoly because it paid partners to make its search engine the default on phones and mobile browsers.

And the bad news continues: The company recently changed its policy to allow tracking you with fingerprinting. But you don’t have to use Google (though it's hard to avoid the code it places on nearly every website you visit). Alternative search engines often give you more privacy and sometimes come with other benefits as well, such as specialized search tools and commitments to charitable donations. The difference in quality of results between Google and other search engines has become a non-issue, too. We've tested the top alternative search engines and included the ones worthy of consideration below. We focus on standard web search engines here, but you can also read about the new world of generative AI search.

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