AI Search Engines for Content Marketing

Artificial intelligence is upending search engines. While Google and Bing are integrating AI chats, impressive startup providers are emerging.

Here are four AI-driven search engines for content creators.

AI Search Engines for Writers

Perplexity generates streamlined, AI-based search results with source citations. It also suggests “Related” queries, helpful for follow-up questions and ideas for separate articles.

Perplexity generates streamlined, AI-based search results with source citations. It also suggests “Related” queries. Click image to enlarge.

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Waldo is an AI research assistant for creating outlines and detailed briefs. Type a question into the search box, and the tool will produce a research outline. Choose sections in the outline, and Waldo will generate answers by citing and summarizing sources or, if prompted, continue searching. The tools can also produce a handy CSV download.

Waldo is an AI research assistant for creating content outlines and detailed briefs. Click image to enlarge.

Keep expanding Waldo’s sections, or add your own. It will then create summarized answers with sources.

Waldo will compile all of the sections to export into Google Docs. Creators can then edit this document and turn it into an article. The result is well-researched and structured content.

Waldo’s only disadvantage is the price, which starts at $139 (without the CSV feature).

Waldo compiles all sections to export into Google Docs. Click image to enlarge.

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Consensus is an AI-driven search engine focused on research papers. It helps find relevant studies based on a query. It’s akin to Google Scholar for laypeople, as Consensus rewrites the content into everyday words.

The tool claims to provide unbiased expert answers on any topic by year of publication.

It classifies search results:

• “Highly Cited” papers have many citations. The tool cautions that “highly cited” does not necessarily mean the findings are accurate, only an indicator of a study’s influence.

• “Systematic Review” sources contain more studies in the full text.

• “Meta Analysis” results include combined data from many studies. The analysis is only as good as the underlying studies.

• “Rigorous Journal” resources are rated in the top 50% of journals by SciScore, a review tool.

Consensus is an AI-driven search engine focused on research papers — helpful for finding relevant studies based on a query. Click image to enlarge.

Consensus is a big help in creating trustworthy, well-research content and finding data for linkable assets such as infographics and whitepapers. It is the only option on this list with transparency for evaluating citations.

Consensus is free at time of writing. A Pro membership is reportedly in the works.

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Komo is a search engine that replies with one article-like answer with citations. Komo does not explain how those sources are discovered or selected.

Komo can provide a quick summary of opinions and perspectives on a topic for further research. In my experience, the tool won’t reply with a definitive answer but instead will produce differing points of view.

An “Explore” button at the base of each response includes related photos, videos, and additional links.

The “Search” button next to Explore facilitates follow-up questions. This tool offers writers a high-level understanding of a topic from multiple angles.

Helpful, Mostly

All four search engines provide citations and links for their results. But many of those sources are secondary, not the original, such as a blog post referring to a third-party survey. This forces writers to go from list to list to find the initial research.

Using those search engines provides an idea of how AI search may work in the future. They are not much different from Google’s search results, except AI summarizes each source instead of showing verbatim snippets.

I suspect (but cannot confirm) that the four search engines are trying to provide unique perspectives on a query topic. Even for seemingly factual questions, all four offered different approaches instead of reiterating the same answer from the same sources, as is the case for traditional search engines.