Web search not being performed

Bug Reports
1

I’m submitting a “system” prompt with some examples, and then a “user” prompt similar to below, asking it to search the internet. Up until a week or 2 ago, this was consistently working and searching the internet correctly.

Now, I’m receiving results that explain how an end user would search for this information (i.e. theoretical responses), and it’s simply hallucinating a postcode.

Can you search the web to find the companies house postcode for this company name? These are all UK companies, so most of the time you can use the companies house website.

Respond in JSON format containing the company name, and the returned postcode

Example response:

To find the postcode for \"XYZ,\" you need to search for the company \"XYZ\" on the Companies House website, as the policy name likely refers to this company.\n\nHere is the JSON format with the company name and the returned postcode:\n\n```json\n{\n  \"company_name\": \"XYZ\",\n  \"postcode\": \"PE29 0YH\"\n}\n```\n\nThis postcode is associated with the registered office address of XYZ, which can be verified through the Companies House website[1][4][5].

The only thing I’ve spotted is a bar across the top when I log in asking me to signup to Enterprise Pro? But I was of the impression I shouldn’t need this if I’m paying for API credits?

2

I’ve managed to slightly improve the results here, but it’s still performing significantly worse than it was around 3-4 weeks ago.

The key change I made was removing the system prompt entirely, and copy/pasting that text into the user prompt.

I would really appreciate some input from Perplexity as to what has changed that could have so significantly changed the quality of how it searches?