2.8 – Analyzing Websites Lesson

Lesson Overview

This lesson focuses on using websites as key sources within NotebookLM to power in-depth research and structured information collection. Unlike simple web searches, incorporating websites as NotebookLM sources allows you to get detailed summaries and topical breakdowns from specific pages you select. This means all insights and AI answers are grounded only in the sites you’ve chosen, giving you higher quality and more relevant results.

Being able to add, combine, and switch between different websites—and even mix them with other source types such as YouTube videos or PDFs—makes this approach valuable for anyone researching complex topics or comparing perspectives. For example, when researching the top AI tools for marketing, pulling in multiple authoritative websites ensures you get a wide coverage and can filter out unnecessary or outdated information quickly.

If you’re regularly compiling notes, building knowledge bases, or synthesizing content from the web alongside other media, these strategies for web analysis will help you create well-sourced, easily referenced outputs without building separate notebooks for each source.

Who This Is For

If your work or study involves collecting, comparing, or summarizing content from multiple web pages, this lesson will be especially useful.

• Business professionals researching industry trends or tools
• Marketers collecting competitor information
• Educators preparing summaries or lesson materials
• Students compiling sources for essays or projects
• Content creators organizing materials from different websites
• nyone needing to reliably build knowledge from targeted web content

Where This Fits in a Workflow

Website analysis with NotebookLM typically comes into play after you have identified key web sources for your research topic. Instead of relying solely on search engine results, you can streamline your project by adding select URLs as sources within your notebook.

For example, when comparing the best marketing AI tools, you might first add links from leading review sites and blogs. You can then use NotebookLM’s chat to ask precise questions about this curated collection, generating notes or new sources as needed. This can improve project accuracy when writing reports, building presentations, or compiling learning materials, ensuring your insights are clearly linked to original sources.

Technical & Workflow Benefits

Previously, gathering content from multiple websites meant manually copying, pasting, and summarizing information—often leading to inconsistent notes and unclear sources. By using NotebookLM’s website source feature, you simplify this entire process: the tool imports, summarizes, extracts key topics, and lets you chat with only the selected sites as reference points.

This targeted approach minimizes distraction from unrelated content and reduces the risk of research errors. For instance, when searching for the top five AI marketing tools, your results will only reflect what’s mentioned in your chosen sources—no noise from outside web searches. In busy environments, such as marketing teams or research groups, this method drastically cuts down on manual data gathering time, keeps your notes organized, and increases your confidence in the accuracy of your compiled insights.

Practice Exercise

Practice analyzing websites in NotebookLM using real URLs:

1. Choose two or three reputable pages about a specific topic—such as “top productivity apps,” “sustainable business trends,” or “learning strategies.”
2. Add each website as a source to your open notebook in NotebookLM.
3. Use the chat feature to ask a direct question about your topic based only on these websites (e.g., “Based on these sources, what are the top three productivity apps?”).
4. Reflect: Was the answer more focused and reliable compared to doing a general web search or using just one source?

Course Context Recap

This lesson is part of the Google NotebookLM Complete Course, building skills for advanced and efficient research. Previously, you learned to add and summarize websites; now, you’re learning to analyze multiple sites together for higher-quality results. Up next, you’ll explore more advanced uses of AI-powered integration and document analysis within NotebookLM. Continue through the course for deeper techniques and the full range of tools.