When to Use Google vs. Wikipedia vs. ChatGPT
As far back as most of us can recall—unless you're willing to show your age and admit you remember Excite, Lycos, or AltaVista—Google has been the undisputed heavyweight of online search. But that's not to say it was the first and last word: for nearly that entire length of time, Wikipedia has been both a supplier of information to the search giant as well as its trusty backup.
Some other top websites over this period have had their place, like YouTube and Reddit, but serve more specialized roles. Twitter once dominated real-time conversation, but in its current incarnation as “X” it has surrendered its claim to the global town square. TikTok would also like a word, but it skews young enough that its broader influence may not be fully realized until Gen Z starts controlling corporate budgets.
These days, information discovery on the internet is more complex. ChatGPT has rocketed to become the world’s fifth most-visited website, surpassing long-time top-10 mainstays like Wikipedia and Reddit. Meanwhile, Google’s era of “ten blue links” is a distant memory; opinions of its AI Overviews are mixed at best, and after years of relentless SEO optimization, the broader web has seen better days.
So where does the average internet user begin when searching for information nowadays? Google is no longer the default, but nor is it obsolete. LLMs have pulled equal with it, represented here by far and away the most popular among them, ChatGPT. Meanwhile, Wikipedia is still better for lots of things, even if its actual search function leaves something to be desired—just use Google and add "wiki" to your search, voila.
But what is each best at? Where should you go based on what you're looking for? Is there a memorable framework you can use to quickly decide which platform to start with? My friends, I have the answer.
The New Search Triad
To understand where you should look first for which type of information, start by matching your intentions to one of the questions below:
Google: Where is it?
Wikipedia: What is it?
ChatGPT: How can I use it?
It is my contention that by determining which category fits your inquiry best, you'll know which tool will get you there fastest:
Google: Where Is It?
Google remains your starting point for most things. It connects you to more types of information, faster, than anything else.
Most crucially, Google knows where to find everything, and more to the point it knows where to find the online representation of IRL things: movie showtimes, contact information, a restaurant for tonight, directions, the official website of any brand or person. It's also where you go for timely information, like breaking news and live scores.
Google also does the best job pulling together multimedia, such as photos of the vacation destination you're researching, or videos for that song you haven't heard in forever. It's long displaced IMDb as the best place to see actor headshots from the movie you just paused, and is only marginally less reliable (it still sometimes shows actors rumored for roles but didn't come true). Even in text, Google's licensing deals with music publishers make it the best place for lyrics—Genius hasn't annotated enough songs to justify the extra click.
Speaking of extra clicks, Google has borrowed enough quick-reference material from Wikipedia over time to be convenient for you, even if it makes Wikipedia editors nervous.
Use Google for live, local, and official information:
Real-time updates: breaking news, weather, live scores
Location-specific results: restaurants near you, business hours, directions
Shopping and product comparisons
Multimedia search: images, videos, maps
Official sources: government sites, corporate pages, forms
The online expression of any real-world entity
Wikipedia: What Is It?
Wikipedia is where you go to get your bearings: what is the context, how does this information fit into other information. The wealth of internal links, categorization, and structured information make it the best place to quickly situate yourself in a new topic.
Wikipedia's familiar article construction, with its recognizable section headings—"Overview", "Personal life", even "Controversies"—are cues that can give you an instant sense that you understand it better (even if that confidence is sometimes misplaced). Wikipedia is of course only as good as the time and intentions of whoever came before to explain the topic, and certain topics get more love than others.
Wikipedia excels at historical information, scientific concepts, and well-understood phenomena. Its dependence on reliable sources—academic journals when possible, journalism for most things—means topics those publications cover are handled well, especially where they overlap with editor interests. Topics that don't interest those editors, or that they're hostile toward, either don't get covered or are left to languish.
But that's a small minority of disputed areas. On most subjects where there isn't much debate, there's nothing like it. Sure, ChatGPT can assemble things that sound like Wikipedia entries, but the inconsistent sourcing—when the model thinks it can answer from training versus when it adds information from a search—makes it harder to trust. A Wikipedia page is at least written by a person. You may not like their point of view, but at least you know they have one.
Wikipedia is also where you go for long-form content short of reading an actual book. Some editors have meticulously unpacked entire works—like Robert Caro's books, whose insights are scattered across hundreds of pages.
Use Wikipedia for consistent, well-supported context:
Structured overviews with scope and history
Neutral presentation of disputed topics
Citations to primary and secondary sources
Coverage of obscure topics, from medieval battles to chemical compounds
Understanding how topics interconnect
ChatGPT: How Can I Use It?
ChatGPT does something the other two can't: it works with you, and helps you work with the information you find.
Google retrieves, and Wikipedia explains. But ChatGPT—and again, I'm using it as a stand-in for all popular LLMs—takes this further: it synthesizes, adapts, and iterates. Ask it to explain something, and it will tailor the explanation to the foregoing conversation. Ask a follow-up, and it adjusts accordingly. The interaction is cumulative in a way that searching and reading simply can't be.
This makes it especially good at a few things. First, synthesis. Ask "what are people saying about tonight's game?" and it distills the essence of what you'd otherwise assemble from scanning a dozen headlines. Second, translation between contexts: it can take a technical concept and make it accessible, or take something that appears simple and unpack its hidden complexity. Third, thinking out loud: when you're not sure what you're looking for yet, ChatGPT helps you iterate toward clarity.
What's more, ChatGPT does something else the others can't do at all: ChatGPT lets you explore connections that don't exist yet. You can take X and Y—two things no one has written about together—and ask what happens when you put them in conversation. The probabilistic nature of the model means it can surface patterns and parallels that no human has bothered to articulate, because no human had a reason to try.
Sometimes the practical benefit is simple: Wikipedia articles can be long enough that finding what you need requires too much effort. ChatGPT can surface the specific thing you're after instantaneously. No more scrolling through an article (or Reddit thread) looking for the specific thing you're after.
The question ChatGPT answers isn't "where" or "what"—it's "how do I use this information once I have it?"
Use ChatGPT when you need personalized, interactive assistance:
Explanations tailored to your background
Summaries of long documents
Creative ideation and brainstorming
Comparative analysis of complex options
Step-by-step guidance through a process
Quick context before an event
What Each One Can't Do
Now that we've talked about what each one is best at, let's also take a moment to consider where each falls down—sometimes hard. Consider:
Google fragments information across sources. A quick scan of the page won't give you a broad sense of the topic the way it used to. Now it tries to surface the actual answer, which oddly makes it good for both widely-searched topics—what's Jim Carrey been in recently—and very narrow queries—what song is in that one Apple commercial—but weaker for complex, in-between topics that benefit from context and synthesis.
Wikipedia can be slow to update its pages, except for topics dominating the headlines. It excels once topics have settled, but when facts are still in flux or coverage is thin, it can be very frustrating. And while its goal of neutrality is a strength, the mere fact it is trying makes it all the more frustrating when it falls short. Finally, its licensing limitations make it a terrible place to find photos of celebrities or virtually any kind of video file.
ChatGPT is strongest when translating information into usable form, like summarizing a dense report, comparing options, or walking you through a process. It's decent at giving you historical context, but it isn’t reliably up to date and doesn't enforce strict sourcing. It's not as strict about copyrights as Wikipedia, but good luck getting it to quote you lyrics, and it still isn't really set up for images or media.
The Power of Three
In some ways, finding information online has never been easier, because there's more to be found than ever before. But in other ways, it's more challenging, because online discovery hasn't been this fragmented in a generation. For today's internet explorers, you can't rely on one tool. You have to know when each one serves you best:
Google when you need to find specific real-world entities, time-sensitive, and location-based information
Wikipedia when you need to understand how something fits into the broader landscape of knowledge
ChatGPT when you need personalized explanation, synthesis, or help thinking something through
At least, that is how this career internet user sees things. What do you think: Are you still defaulting to Google? Should I have included Reddit? What else did I leave out? Consider me very interested to hear how others construct their search stack.
