Perplexity's 'Focus' Modes Quietly Fixed My Garbage Answers
Default search gave me vague replies. Pointing it at academic or social sources changed the quality.
My early Perplexity answers read like a blog summary, useful but shallow. Then I found the Focus options, academic, social, or specific sources, and pointed a question at papers instead of the open web. The answer got stricter and the links got real.
For a claim about a study, Focus on academic turns a hand-wave into citations I can check. For a 'what are people saying' question, social focus surfaces posts instead of polished articles, which is closer to the truth sometimes.
The lesson is that the default mode is a compromise. When the question has a right source type, name it. 'What does the research say' wants academic; 'what's the buzz' wants social. Letting Perplexity guess gives you the average of both.
I still read the top link before quoting. Focus narrows the field but doesn't vouch for it. The mode is a filter, not a fact-checker, and using the right filter is half the accuracy battle.