3.3 – Summarizing and Comparing From Web Links Lesson

Lesson Overview

This lesson focuses on using ChatGPT’s Browsing feature to handle information directly from the web—a significant advancement over relying solely on ChatGPT’s trained data. You will see how to prompt ChatGPT to fetch, summarize, and even compare information from URLs in real time. This solves the issue of outdated information, as ChatGPT’s built-in training data is often several months behind the current date.

Whether you want a quick summary of a news article, a breakdown of a blog post, or a comparison of two products, this feature can save time and provide clarity. Examples include researching recent tech releases, quickly reviewing lengthy articles, or preparing market comparisons for a newsletter. The lesson introduces prompting approaches for both summaries and comparisons, with practical advice on tailoring output using follow-up prompts. This skill is especially helpful for tasks where fast, accurate summaries are needed, or when you need to cross-check details from multiple sources without manual web browsing.

Who This Is For

This lesson is helpful for anyone who needs current web information summarized or compared efficiently.

• Content creators and newsletter writers seeking up-to-date research
• Educators and students preparing reports using recent articles
• Marketers tracking competitor updates or product comparisons
• Product reviewers and researchers gathering latest data
• Busy professionals needing concise updates on trending topics
• Anyone curious about quickly extracting value from web content

Where This Fits in a Workflow

Summarizing and comparing from web links is a core step when you need timely, reliable information during research, content planning, or decision making. For example, when drafting a market update, you can prompt ChatGPT to summarize several news sources, or directly compare two competing products based on their latest web data. This method is also well-suited to prepping for meetings with recent facts in hand, or when compiling side-by-side feature lists for teams or audiences. Integrating Browsing into your prompt flow helps connect your work with the most recent, relevant data—no more being limited by outdated information.

Technical & Workflow Benefits

Before the Browsing (Search) function, ChatGPT was limited to its training data—which was always months behind real-time events. There was no way to get the latest information or have AI help synthesize recent content. Now, with Browsing, you can set ChatGPT to search the web as part of your prompt, pulling current content directly from the specified URLs, or letting it choose its own sources.

For instance, rather than manually opening and reading multiple articles, copying content, or piecing together tables, ChatGPT delivers a clear summary or even a comparison table—citing its sources for easy reference. This saves hours each week, boosts accuracy, and keeps your insights current for newsletters, reports, or presentations. Browsing combines live data retrieval with fast summarization so you can handle more tasks in less time and with more confidence.

Practice Exercise

Pick any recent online article that interests you—a news site, product announcement, or blog post.

1. Copy the article's URL.
2. Use ChatGPT with Browsing/Search enabled and prompt: “Summarize the key points of this article: [insert URL].”
3. Experiment with a follow-up prompt: “Present the summary as bullet points,” or ask, “Reduce this summary to one sentence.”

As a bonus, try comparing two articles or products by prompting: “Compare [Article/Product A URL] and [Article/Product B URL] in a table, focusing on [features, pros, cons, reviews, etc.].”

**Question:** How does ChatGPT’s summary or comparison differ from what you’d pull out during a manual read-through?

Course Context Recap

This lesson builds on foundational prompt skills by teaching you to unlock up-to-date web information using ChatGPT’s Browsing feature. Previous lessons covered working with general prompts and making follow-up requests. Next, you’ll explore even more advanced prompting techniques. Keep advancing through the course for more ways to make ChatGPT an essential part of your workflow with the latest web data. Continue for more real-world, practical ChatGPT skills.