The Workflow Edit | Practical AI Tool Tutorial
How to Use You.com Without Generic AI Instructions
You.com is an AI search that answers with live web sources. It works best when you demand a cited answer and a recency cutoff for every claim.
Dear Suzannah
Dear Suzannah, I keep Googling the same market question and getting ten tabs of blog spam before I find one real number. How do I ask for research and actually get sources I can cite to a client?
Ask for the source with the answer, every time.
The real use case
You need a sourced answer to a factual or market question — a stat, a definition, a comparison — for a deck or a client email. You can’t cite ‘the internet said so,’ so every claim has to come with a link you can check.
The tool-specific prompt to use
This prompt is specific to You.com and this use case. Paste it into the chat box, then replace the bracketed notes with your real project details.
Answer this research question with live sources I can cite. Question: [your exact question, e.g. what is the US small-business failure rate in the last 3 years]. Audience for the answer: [client / boss / deck]. Depth I need: [one headline number plus context]. For every claim, give: the claim, the exact source URL, the date the source was published, and the primary publisher (not an aggregator). Only use sources from [year] or later — if a number is older, flag it. If two sources disagree on a number, show both and say which is more authoritative and why. Do not summarize without a source. Do not use blog spam or SEO listicles as a source. Give me the answer first, then a one-line source list, then any claim that I should double-check myself because it is contested. End with the single source I should cite if I only have room for one.
Prompt length: about 200 words.
Make the result less generic
- Demand a live source URL for every claim, not just ‘according to studies.’
- Set a date cutoff so stale stats get flagged.
- Ask for the primary publisher, not an aggregator that copied it.
- When two sources disagree, ask it to show both and pick the stronger one.
- Ask for the one source you’d cite if you only had room for one.
Quick human check
- Does every claim have a clickable source?
- Are the sources recent enough for your question?
- Are they primary publishers, not aggregators?
- Do the numbers match what the source actually says?
- Does the answer actually answer your question?
