AI answers or search results: when to use which

Short answer

Use an AI answer to get your bearings: the vocabulary, the options and what to search for. Go to search results and primary sources (the original page, such as the official site or the law itself) for any specific fact, number, quote, date, law or piece of recent news. Whatever you take from an answer, check its citation (the source it links to) in 60 seconds. The routing table, the check and the prompt (text you paste into the chat) below are our suggestions.

Running example (illustrative). Leo is planning a rail trip. He wants to understand what kinds of rail pass exist, check this week's timetable and confirm a claim that a museum is free on Sundays.

Why it matters

AI answers save clicks, and they also remove the clicks that would have let you see the source.

• Fewer clicks. In Pew's tracking of 900 US adults' 68,879 Google searches (March 2025), people clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when none did. They clicked a link inside the summary on 1% of visits (Pew Research Center, July 2025, field study).
• Wrong citations. In a 2025 Tow Center test, eight AI search tools got citation queries wrong more than 60% of the time while sounding sure (Tow Center, Columbia Journalism Review, field study; more in Check before you trust).
• News answers. In a 2025 study by 22 public broadcasters across 18 countries and 14 languages, 45% of AI assistants' answers about news had at least one significant problem. Almost a third had serious sourcing problems and one in five had major factual errors (EBU/BBC, 2025, field study).

The two error studies are about news and citations, which are hard cases, and do not say how often an answer to an everyday question is wrong. A source link in an answer is not evidence that the source says what the answer claims.

Which to use first

For Leo: the rail pass types are an AI answer, then the operator's own page for prices. The timetable comes from the operator's site. The museum claim is a specific fact, so he searches and reads the museum's own page.

The 60-second citation check

1. Click the cited link. Does it load, and is it from the publisher or author named?
2. Search the page for the key claim or number. Is it there, in those words or plainly the same?
3. Check the date on the page against the date the answer implies.
4. If the answer cites a summary of a source, go to the original and check the claim there.
5. If any step fails, drop the claim and not only the link.

A prompt for assistants that search

Paste this before your question when the assistant can browse the web:

Answer using only sources you can link to. For each claim, give the URL and
the exact sentence it rests on. If you cannot find a source for a claim,
write "no source found" and do not answer it from memory. At the end, list
anything you were unsure about.
My question: <QUESTION>

Replace the following:

• <QUESTION>: your question, with the date range or place if it matters, such as What are this week's opening hours of the Museum of Local History?.

The prompt does not make the links correct. It makes them checkable, and the 60-second check does the rest.

Limits

Try this next

1. Next time an assistant gives you a fact, run the 60-second check on one citation. (2 minutes)
2. Write down the three questions you ask most often, and mark each with its row in the table. (10 minutes)
3. For a full research routine, see Research a topic with citation checking. For the wider habit of checking by stakes, see Check before you trust: a five-minute routine.

Sources

1. Pew Research Center. Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results, July 2025. Field study (browsing data). Link
2. Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia Journalism Review. Eight AI search engines and their citing of news, 2025. Field study. Link
3. EBU and BBC. AI assistants' answers to questions about news, 2025. Field study. Link

Changes

1. v1.010 Oct 2026first version