Unleash Your Research Potential: Discover How NotebookLM Outperforms ChatGPT

Discover how NotebookLM outperforms ChatGPT for research. Load your own trusted sources, ask questions, and get accurate answers backed by citations. Boost productivity and elevate your research process.

February 17, 2025

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Discover a powerful AI tool that revolutionizes your research process. Notebook LM allows you to curate your own trusted sources, ask targeted questions, and receive accurate, citation-backed answers - saving you time and ensuring the reliability of your information. This blog post explores the game-changing features of Notebook LM and how it can streamline your work as a content creator, business owner, or student.

How To Get Access to NotebookLM (Even If You're Outside the US)

To get access to NotebookLM, even if you're outside the US, follow these steps:

  1. Go to the NotebookLM website at notebook.lm.google.com.
  2. If you're not from the US, you won't be able to access it directly. You'll need to use a VPN to connect from a US location.
  3. Once connected to a US VPN, click on the "Try NotebookLM" button to access the tool.
  4. You'll now be able to use NotebookLM and take advantage of its features, even if you're located outside the US.

What Google Researchers Want You to Use Notebook LM For

Google researchers have designed Notebook LM to be a powerful research tool with a variety of use cases. Here are some of the key ways they want you to utilize this AI assistant:

  1. Reading and Comprehension: Notebook LM can help improve your reading comprehension and retention by allowing you to easily access and explore the sources you've provided. You can click on the source icons to read them in full or ask questions as you go.

  2. Writing and Ideation: While Notebook LM doesn't currently have full writing capabilities, it provides a suite of tools to assist with the style and substance of your writing. It can help generate ideas, provide feedback, and ensure your writing is clear and impactful.

  3. Research and Analysis: Notebook LM shines as a research tool, allowing you to curate your own trusted sources and ask questions that are grounded in those sources. This helps you avoid the potential pitfalls of relying on unverified web searches.

  4. Transcript Management: For content creators, filmmakers, or podcast producers, Notebook LM can be invaluable for storing and navigating through interview or documentary transcripts. You can quickly find relevant passages and summarize key information.

  5. Help Documentation and Onboarding: The combination of a chat interface and source-grounded responses makes Notebook LM an excellent platform for creating help documentation or onboarding guides for new users, customers, or colleagues.

Google wants you to leverage Notebook LM's unique capabilities to streamline your research, writing, and knowledge management processes. By curating your own trusted sources and asking targeted questions, you can unlock new levels of efficiency and accuracy in your work.

How to Use Notebook LM in Your Research Process

As a content creator, business owner, or student, Notebook LM can be an incredibly powerful tool to streamline your research process. Here are the key ways you can leverage Notebook LM:

  1. Curate and Create: Gather relevant sources on your topic and import them into Notebook LM. Then, use the platform to create your own content, drawing insights and citations directly from the trusted sources you've provided.

  2. Efficient Citations: Notebook LM will automatically provide the most relevant passages from your sources as citations, ensuring your work is properly referenced.

  3. Manage Word Count: Keep an eye on the total word count of your selected sources. If it exceeds 5,000 words, Notebook LM may struggle with tasks that require a high-level overview.

  4. Maintain Source Formatting: Poorly formatted sources, such as imported PDFs, can cause issues with Notebook LM's performance. Be mindful of the source formatting to ensure accurate results.

  5. Improve Comprehension and Retention: Use Notebook LM to enhance your reading experience. Click on source icons to read them in full, and ask questions as you go to deepen your understanding.

  6. Streamline Writing Workflows: Leverage Notebook LM's suite of writing tools to assist with the style and substance of your content, while maintaining a separate document for the actual writing process.

  7. Leverage Transcripts: Store interview or meeting transcripts in Notebook LM and use the platform to quickly summarize and find relevant passages, saving you time and effort.

  8. Create Helpful Documentation: Notebook LM's chat interface and source-grounding capabilities make it an excellent platform for developing help documentation or onboarding guides for your organization or customers.

By incorporating Notebook LM into your research workflow, you can save time, improve the quality of your work, and enjoy a more efficient and enjoyable research experience.

Top Tips for Using Notebook LM

Here are the top tips for using Notebook LM:

  1. Curate and Create: Take the information you find on the web and put it into Notebook LM as sources. Then, use Notebook LM to create your own masterpiece.

  2. Citations are Answers: Notebook LM will provide the most relevant passages from your sources as citations when answering your questions.

  3. Watch Your Word Count: If the total word count of your selected sources exceeds 5,000 words, Notebook LM may have difficulty performing tasks that involve long-form overviews.

  4. Mind Better to Use the iPad: Notebook LM is not a calculator, so it's better to use a separate tool for calculations.

  5. Keep an Eye on Source Formatting: If Notebook LM's answers seem erratic or prone to hallucinations, the likely culprit is a source that has been formatted in a way that makes it difficult for Notebook LM to parse.

  6. Imported PDFs are Often the Worst Offenders: Be mindful of the formatting of your sources, as poorly formatted PDFs can cause issues for Notebook LM.

Example: Researching the Rabbit R1 Using Notebook LM

As a content creator, business owner, or student, you can use Notebook LM to make your research process much easier. Let me show you an example of how I used Notebook LM to research the Rabbit R1.

First, I searched for "rabbit" in the Notebook LM interface and found several relevant YouTube reviews from creators I trust, such as Matthew Burman, Unbox Therapy, Wes Roth, and Riley Brown. I then used a Chrome extension to download the transcripts of these videos and added them as sources in Notebook LM.

With my trusted sources loaded, I asked Notebook LM, "What are the key features of the Rabbit R1?" The tool provided a concise and accurate bullet point list of the key features, including a natural language interface, rapid knowledge access, AI-powered knowledge sources, Vision AI, and a simplified web interface.

To verify the accuracy of the information, I hovered over the citations and saw that they were indeed from the sources I had provided, such as Wes Roth's video.

I then asked Notebook LM, "How can I train my Rabbit R1 to do an action?" The tool initially responded that the provided sources did not contain any information on this. However, when I rephrased the question slightly, Notebook LM provided a detailed step-by-step explanation on how to train the Rabbit R1 to perform custom actions.

This example showcases the power of Notebook LM in streamlining the research process. By curating my own trusted sources and asking targeted questions, I was able to quickly and accurately gather the information I needed, without the risk of relying on potentially unreliable sources or hallucinated responses.

Conclusion

As a content creator, business owner, and researcher, I have found Notebook LM to be an invaluable tool for my work. The ability to curate and create content using trusted sources, along with the powerful features like citations, word count management, and source formatting, have significantly improved my research process and productivity.

One of the key advantages of Notebook LM is its focus on using your own sources, rather than relying on the open web like ChatGPT. This ensures that the information you're working with is from sources you trust and can rely on. The citation feature is particularly useful, as it allows you to quickly reference the relevant passages from your sources.

Additionally, Notebook LM's versatility in handling different use cases, such as reading, note-taking, and writing, makes it a comprehensive tool for various research and content creation tasks. The integration with transcripts and the ability to use it as a help center or onboarding guide further demonstrate its flexibility.

Overall, Notebook LM has been a game-changer for me, saving me hours of time and providing me with a more enjoyable and efficient research process. I highly recommend this tool to anyone looking to streamline their research and content creation workflows.

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