How to Automate Research with Perplexity and Make.com: Simplify Your News Aggregation

Are you tired of combing through countless RSS feeds, Google Alerts, or web pages just to stay on top of the latest news? 🤯 This step-by-step process will show you how to effortlessly research and aggregate the latest news on your chosen topics using Perplexity’s powerful search capabilities via Make.com. Simplification is the name of the game—and spoiler alert: the smarter your automation, the easier your life becomes! 💡

✅ Why Automate Your News Research?

Before diving in, let’s talk about why this matters:

• Save hours of manual research so you can shift focus to work that truly matters. 🕒
• Get highly relevant, fresh insights by leveraging advanced AI tools. 🔎
• Transform information overload into actionable summaries delivered directly to your inbox.

By the end of this setup, you’ll have a streamlined system that works smarter—not harder.

1️⃣ The Problem: Why Overcomplicating Doesn’t Help

In the video, it starts with a classic rookie mistake: creating an overly complicated automation.

The Old Setup

📌 Tools Used:

• Google Alerts 📧
• RSS feeds 📃
• Manual checks for relevance.

This bloated system involved juggling multiple input sources to compile news, only to spend time filtering out irrelevant results afterward.

Scenario Highlight: Imagine getting ten news emails a day, half of which don’t apply to your niche. You waste valuable time every morning just sorting through noise. 🚨

How to Streamline: Simplicity Wins

Here’s where Perplexity AI and Make.com joined forces to create a sleek, automated setup. Now, instead of messy inputs, everything is funneled into a single, cohesive workflow that handles:

• Searching for the freshest news 📰.
• Filtering by recency (day/week/month).
• Sending formatted results directly to your email or Google Drive.

💡 Pro Tip: When tackling any automation, always aim for the simplest end-to-end workflow first. Complexity may feel “smart,” but unnecessary layers bog you down!

2️⃣ Meet Perplexity: The Swiss Army Knife of Research 🔍

If you’re unfamiliar with Perplexity, think of it as a research-focused sibling of ChatGPT—but with real-time internet search capabilities! 🌐

Key Features That Shine:

1. Deep Research Mode: Generate either quick results or detailed reports (several pages long!) depending on your needs.
2. Citations First: Every response comes with sources, making it easy to trace back reliable info. 🌟
3. Custom Filters via API: Use specific search recency ranges like “past day,” “past week,” or even “past year.”

🐾 Example Walkthrough:
Say you’re a marketer looking for AI developments from the past week. Use Perplexity’s API to search for:

“Latest AI technology breakthroughs last week.”

You’ll not only get an accurate summary but also the source links to explore further. No guesswork required.

Pro Tip: Enhance Versatility 🚀

Pair Perplexity with Make.com (formerly Integromat) to unlock endless options, like saving results to your cloud or scheduling automatic summaries every morning.

3️⃣ Step-By-Step: Build the Automation with Make.com ⚙️

Here’s how to set up your smart research assistant:

Step 1: Access Perplexity API via Make.com

✅ Pro Account Required: The Perplexity API is feature-rich, but to unlock it, you’ll need a Perplexity Pro subscription. Don’t worry—it’s budget-friendly and works similarly to OpenAI pricing with free credits included.

1. Go to Make.com and create a new scenario.
2. Add “HTTP module” to make API requests to Perplexity.
3. Insert the correct API credentials and keys (provided by your Perplexity account).

Step 2: Fine-Tune Your Research Input 🔧

• Choose your search model:
• Sona Standard (basic) or Sona Pro (advanced).
• For detailed insights, opt for deep research (think: long-form PDFs or markdown summaries).
• Craft Your Query/Prompt:
  Example: “Summarize the top 5 technology news stories from the past week with links.”
• Advanced Settings: Use filters for specific recency ranges (day, week, month) to keep your results fresh.

Step 3: Collect & Transform Results

When Perplexity returns data, it provides two key elements:

1. Content: Formatted in markdown for easy readability.
2. Citations: A list of URLs used for the response.

💡 Pro Tip: Use GPT-powered tools to clean or format these outputs further, such as creating polished bullet-point summaries, blog drafts, or even full reports.

Step 4: Send Results Your Way 📨

• Use Make.com to deliver output directly to:
• Your inbox as an HTML email (formatted, aligned for readability).
• Google Drive (think saved “Research Logs” or “Blog Topics”).
• CMS platforms (for auto-drafting articles).
• For emails, set up formatting with GPT assistance, ensuring clean tables, headers, and a clear structure.

🐾 Imagine receiving an inbox-ready briefing every morning, complete with neatly-organized summaries AND clickable sources. Sweet, right? 🍩

4️⃣ Beyond Email: Expand Your Automation Horizons

The automation isn’t locked to emailing summaries. Here are more advanced use cases:

🌟 Ideas for Expansion:

• Content Creation: Auto-generate blog posts from Perplexity’s summaries and upload them to your website.
• Video Generation: Pass your research results to tools like Synthesia or Pictory to create short-form videos. 🎥
• Social Media: Extract insights to auto-schedule tweets, LinkedIn updates, or even Facebook posts.
• Summarize Citations: Deep-dive into individual links (YouTube transcripts, full article summaries, etc.) for extra precision.

Automation is an iterative process—so play around with these ideas and adapt to your unique needs.

🛠️ Resource Toolbox

Here are tools and resources that can supercharge your research routine:

1. Make.com
   Flexible automation tool to connect Perplexity API with various platforms.

2. Perplexity Pro
   Get access to the API and use its robust, real-time search capabilities.

3. Tella
   Great for recording screen tutorials or step-by-step guides.

4. Hostinger
   Affordable hosting for testing new content ideas (paired with your automated research).

5. Zapier
   A highly popular alternative for basic automation tasks.

6. Tiptalk’s GPT Formatting Guide
   Free guides on how to polish AI outputs for higher readability.

7. Synthesia.io
   For turning text-based research results into AI-generated videos.

🎉 Wrapping Up: Smarter Research, Faster Execution

With Perplexity and Make.com, you’ve unlocked the secret to automated purpose-driven research. Tasks that used to take hours—tracking trends, filtering articles, recording insights—now take minutes.

🔑 The lesson here? Whether you’re curating news, creating engaging content, or keeping your business updated on the latest industry trends, automation can leapfrog your productivity.

So what will you simplify first?