Web Search Skill — AI Search

Search the web and summarize results for any question. Ideal for research, fact-finding, and competitive scans — with safety tips and worked examples.

researchwebsearchsummarization

Web Search Skill

TL;DR

The Web Search skill lets an AI agent query live web results and return a structured summary — with citations — instead of relying on its training data cutoff. It’s the fastest way to answer time-sensitive questions, verify current facts, or pull competitor pricing without opening a browser tab yourself.

Use it for research tasks where freshness matters. Avoid it for anything that requires reading behind paywalls or logging into authenticated pages — those require a browser automation skill instead.

What it does

  • Runs targeted queries against live search engines and returns the top N results filtered by relevance, date, or domain.
  • Summarizes findings into a structured format — bullet points, a short paragraph, or a comparison table — depending on your prompt.
  • Attaches source citations so every claim links back to the page it came from, making fact-checking straightforward.
  • Applies freshness filters to exclude results older than a configurable window (e.g., last 7 days, last 90 days).
  • Supports domain allowlists and blocklists — useful when you only want results from .gov sites, academic domains, or a specific competitor’s blog.
  • Handles follow-up queries by refining the search based on gaps in the first result set.

Best for

Competitive research: Ask “What pricing plans does [competitor] offer as of this month?” and get a summarized answer with links — no manual tab-switching.

Fact verification: Before publishing a stat in a report, run it through web search to confirm the original source still says what you think it says.

Industry monitoring: Run a weekly query like “AI regulation news last 7 days” and pipe the summary into your RSS digest or a Slack channel.

Pre-meeting prep: Pull recent news about a company or person before a call. Combine with meeting notes to auto-attach context to your transcript.

This skill is less useful when you need to read full articles (it summarizes snippets, not full text), when results are behind a login wall, or when you need structured data extraction from a specific page — use website monitor for that.

How to use (example)

Scenario: Competitive pricing scan

You’re preparing a sales deck and need current pricing for three SaaS competitors.

Input prompt:

Search for the current pricing pages of Notion, Coda, and Confluence.
Return a comparison table with: plan name, monthly price per user, storage limit, and guest access policy.
Only use results from the official domains (notion.so, coda.io, atlassian.com).
Freshness: last 30 days.

What the skill does:

  1. Runs three separate queries, one per domain.
  2. Fetches the top result from each official pricing page.
  3. Extracts the relevant fields and normalizes them into a table.
  4. Attaches a citation URL and retrieval timestamp to each row.

Expected output:

| Tool        | Plan       | Price/user/mo | Storage  | Guest access     | Source                        |
|-------------|------------|---------------|----------|------------------|-------------------------------|
| Notion      | Plus       | $10           | Unlimited| Yes (limited)    | notion.so/pricing (Mar 2026)  |
| Coda        | Pro        | $12           | Unlimited| Yes (view-only)  | coda.io/pricing (Mar 2026)    |
| Confluence  | Standard   | $5.75         | 250 GB   | No               | atlassian.com/... (Mar 2026)  |

Common variations:

  • Add "return raw JSON" to the prompt if you’re piping results into another tool.
  • Use "summarize in 3 sentences" for a quick briefing rather than a table.
  • Combine with competitor research for a deeper analysis beyond pricing.

Permissions & Risks

Required permissions: Network
Risk level: Medium

The skill makes outbound HTTP requests to search APIs and target URLs. Key risks to understand:

Rate limiting: Most search APIs (Bing, Google Custom Search, Brave Search) enforce per-minute and per-day quotas. If you’re running bulk research tasks, add a delay between queries or batch them into a single multi-query prompt. Hitting rate limits mid-task produces partial results that look complete but aren’t.

Citation accuracy: The skill summarizes snippets — it doesn’t always read the full article. A snippet can be misleading if the article’s conclusion contradicts its opening paragraph. Always click through on high-stakes claims.

Source freshness vs. cache lag: Search engines cache pages. A result dated “today” might reflect a page that was indexed two weeks ago. For pricing or legal information, check the Last-Modified header or the page’s own timestamp.

Recommended guardrails:

  • Set a maximum result count (e.g., top 5) to keep summaries focused.
  • Always include citation URLs in the output — never accept a summary without sources.
  • For sensitive research (legal, medical, financial), treat web search output as a starting point, not a final answer.
  • Log queries and outputs if you’re using this in a team workflow for auditability.

Troubleshooting

Results are outdated despite a freshness filter
The search API may not honor date filters strictly. Try adding the current year to your query text (e.g., “Notion pricing 2026”) as a fallback signal.

The summary contradicts the linked source
The skill summarized a snippet that doesn’t represent the full article. Open the citation URL and read the relevant section directly.

Domain allowlist isn’t working
Check whether your provider supports site: operator filtering. Some APIs require it as a query parameter rather than a prompt instruction.

Getting results in the wrong language
Add an explicit language instruction: "Return results in English only" or set the hl (host language) parameter in your API config.

Hitting rate limits on bulk queries
Break your query list into batches of 5–10 and add a 2-second pause between batches. Alternatively, use a search API with higher quotas (Brave Search API has generous free tiers).

No results for a very specific query
Broaden the query first to confirm the topic is indexed, then narrow. If the topic is too niche, consider using RSS digest to monitor specific sources directly instead.

Alternatives

Manual Google search — Zero cost, maximum control, but doesn’t scale. Good for one-off lookups; impractical for recurring research tasks or bulk queries.

Perplexity AI — Provides AI-synthesized answers with citations out of the box. Better for conversational research; less flexible for structured output or programmatic use. No API for custom integrations without a paid plan.

Dedicated SERP APIs (SerpAPI, Bright Data, Oxylabs) — More reliable for high-volume scraping and structured data extraction. Higher cost and more setup required, but better for production pipelines that need consistent schemas.

If your use case is monitoring a specific page for changes rather than searching broadly, website monitor is a better fit.

Links & sources

  • Search API options: Brave Search API, Bing Web Search API, Google Custom Search JSON API
  • Rate limit documentation: See your chosen provider’s developer docs
  • Related guide: Weekly Research Digest workflow

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