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of 4— Set up Perplexity and understand how it works
What you'll accomplish
Competitive intelligence that takes 3-5 hours through manual Google searches now takes 30-45 minutes. You'll use Perplexity Pro to produce cited, up-to-date competitive snapshots your clients can act on.
What you'll need
- A Perplexity account at perplexity.ai (free tier works for getting started; Pro is $20/mo for more searches and longer answers)
- The competitor brand names and product categories you're researching
- A client context document or brief to frame the research
- Time needed: 30-45 minutes per competitive snapshot
- Cost: Free tier available; $20/month for Perplexity Pro (more searches, longer answers, better model)
Use Perplexity Pro for Competitive Intelligence
Step 1: Set up Perplexity and understand how it works
- Go to perplexity.ai and create a free account (sign in with Google for fastest setup)
- Perplexity is different from ChatGPT — it searches the web in real-time and shows you the sources for every answer. This matters for competitive research: you're getting current information, not AI knowledge that might be 1-2 years old.
- Look at the interface: there's a search bar in the center, a "Focus" dropdown (set to "Web" for competitive research), and a "Pro Search" toggle (blue icon; use this for more thorough multi-step research).
What you should see: A clean search interface similar to Google, but with an AI response at the top and cited sources listed on the side or below.
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