Perplexity Pages: Wrap Research in a Pretty Bow

This post will be a little unusual. It’s a post about a post – that’s about making posts.

Let’s unwrap that.

It’s a post about a post.

Do me a favor, and don’t click this link quite yet:

I’m the biggest fanboy ever of Perplexity. I’d like to share that I’ve never been a “fanboy” of something before. And as someone in my 50’s, that’s saying something. I’ve been a “fan” – of certain electronic music artists, BMW sport sedans, eating marzipan paste right from the futuristic silver tube thingie that you can buy in Safeway, and so forth. But “fanboy” is a new level.

Like, the Perplexity tattoo that I have on my forehead reads: ia.ytixelpreP so that when I see myself in the mirror (and when people see me behind them, waiting for the light to turn green), I can read the text.

(Yes, I wish they were paying me for this. No, no, they are not. Yet!)

I’d like you to keep that in mind as you read the rest of this blog post – that the entire weight of my experience with Perplexity until this point has been nothing but net. (As, I think, you’d say if you were a basketball fan. I am not. I know that a ball and a basket are used to play it. And there seems to be lots of running back and forth from end to end, but that seems a lot like “soccer” or “football” which is really “handegg” and then I’m confused again.  My sports experience comprises a once-every-two-years Olympics binge and a once yearly binge of commercials, while some sports event happens in the background that has an odd scoring system, of which only tennis seems to be odder.  Yeah, even so, I like me some sports analogies, and you’re going to get some because you gotta play the ball where it lands. Or something like that.)

While I like to think that I get what Perplexity is trying to do with Pages, it feels like something that was banged together in a weekend hackathon

Yeah, it works, but there’s no depth. I also haven’t seen a ton of improvement to it since they launched it, and I wonder whether I should make the time to get attached to something that feels like it has a better than zero chance of being Google Plus’ed.

I wasn’t intending this to be any sort of review, yet, here we are.

So! Pages – what are they? Look, there’s a whole Page page up there for you to read. But, here’s the gist. It’s a quick/easy way to knock together a webpage using Perplexity searches to fill in the content blocks.

The Page I put together does a pretty good job of explaining Pages, but if you are creating a Page, you have to be willing to “surf.” You have no direct control over what goes into each block. You can query, you can nudge the query results into more detailed or less, or into bullets or prose. But what you cannot do is highlight a word and delete it. Nor can you click the cursor into place and type in a word. Thus, you have no direct control over the results.

There’s a sort of Zen beauty in this–you have to cede the notion of control–we control nothing in this life**. By acknowledging that, you can haul (spiritual) ass. By ceding the notion of control here in Pages, dropping the pursuit of perfection, you can put something together that is “good enough” in a fraction of the time that you’d take if you tried to put all the text together “just so.”

Do I love the idea? Nope. I often think “oh, jeez, that’s not quite right,” because while my writing style is informal, I’m quite particular about my wording.

Thanks, mom.

But I see the power in it, kinda. I think what I’m struggling with is the question of “What topics are the best/most appropriate for the Pages treatment?” For example, putting together this Pages page (I’m just really not going to tire of that, so, you’re going to have to deal)- putting together this particular Page (ahem) was super easy to get right. Effortless to get the content, straightforward to get Perplexity to draft it up for me.

However, it makes changes I don’t like – changing the titles/subjects of the blocks to being something it considers more appropriate. I’m deliberate in my word choices, so, I’m not a big fan of that. Sometimes it works better, sometimes it works less well, every time it’s irritating.

Here’s the list of benefits that Pages provided for the benefits section. I tabbed in my comments.

AI-powered content generation: Users can instantly create well-structured articles on any topic by simply entering a prompt

• Yeah, this seems pretty true – within the limitations of what Perplexity knows about. So, not quite “any” topic, but “a lot of them”
• It’s going to have some trouble managing real-time topics, niche topics, etc.

Seamless media integration: The platform allows for easy incorporation of various media types, including AI-generated images, illustrations, and diagrams

• Lol, this one is great–note that the three kinds of media types it lists are, really, all the same thing.

No, it doesn’t do multi-media stuff. An obvious limitation. Customizable layouts: Users can tailor the appearance of their pages with flexible section layouts and header image option

• You can have any kind of customizable layout you want, as long as it is a single column where each entry occurs in a stack, with a single image, positioned in one of two places

One-click publishing: Created content can be easily shared and made accessible to others through a simple publishing process

• Absolutely true.

Collaborative research: The tool facilitates effortless exploration and organization of information, making it ideal for collaborative projects

• True

Mobile optimization:  The system automatically optimizes pages for viewing on various devices, ensuring a consistent experience across platforms.

• True

Version history: Users can track changes and revert to previous versions of their content if needed

• Not tested

SEO-friendly output: Generated articles are structured to perform well in search engine rankings, increasing visibility

• This one I don’t get.  Maybe it’s true?

And that leaves the SEO thing, I don’t understand why I would care about this?  Hows does this help my overall SEO presence?  I can’t backlink from that.

Let’s talk about this…

I feel like it is being waaaaaayyyyyy too cautious.  And yet.

I can’t get in there and fix it. I don’t like the waffle words, and I don’t really have a choice.

Again, I get it. They need to protect themselves.

Summing this up:

Here’s what Pages is good for – if you need to knock together an informative page on a topic where you want to have a solid explanation for this topic, but where you don’t care too much about how exactly it is explained. Technical topics: biosciences, math, networking standards, Generative AI topics like caching or quantization. Probably not company-related messaging, topics where you really need to contain the nuance of the words.

Well, why not just point people to Wikipedia?  Excellent question, thank you for asking!

First – what if Wikipedia doesn’t have the topic, or if you want some additional content about a specific aspect.  But, more interesting would be to have a page that was around “Generative AI Efficiency Methods” where you discussed both caching and quantization (along with other topics). Aggregate topics that contain information on a number of topics to explain one higher level topic. 

An excellent idea would be setting one up for a trip that you’re taking – what are the various tourist attractions along your way.  From a marketing perspective, use them if you need to quickly bang something together for a trade show or for a customer.  Something that explains the core concepts underneath what you’re doing – like the nutritional reasons for the various vitamins in your horse feed, or the forward-thinking safety laws that your new toy is adherent to.

Ah, right.  Almost forgot.  Go ahead…

But it will not be interesting if you need any control over the words themselves–you can define the concepts, but not the phrasing. And as someone who works with words for a living, I find that insanely frustrating. Even for these higher-level topics, I’m always thinking “but, we could trim this down over here, and add this over there and it would all be so much better.”

In the end, perhaps I’ll use it for ideas, but anything that goes out with my name on it is absolutely, always, 100% of the time going to have a step where I at least have the choice to directly tweak the language. 

Which makes Perplexity Pages a non-starter for me.  Perhaps your use case will be different?