Perplexity is supposed to search live, but I asked about a government scheme and it gave me the rules from two years ago with citations to old articles. What's the point then?
Perplexity Gave Me Outdated Government Scheme Rules. What’s the Point of Live Search?
Ask by Anubhav Sharma
Updated 06 Sep 2026
It does search, but it doesn't automatically prefer new pages. For anything popular, the old article that's been linked a thousand times ranks above last week's update.
So tell it. Put "latest", "as of this month", or an actual date in your question. Use the Focus dropdown to limit it to news sources. And when an answer looks stale, don't just accept it, reply "these sources are old, find something from the last 30 days" and it'll go again.
For anything where the date matters, laws, prices, who's in charge of what, look at the dates on the citations before you trust the answer. That's the one big advantage it has over a normal chatbot, use it.