Web Search

General-purpose web search for information that is NOT in HG Insights' proprietary data — recent news, general facts, public-web context, and anything about people, products, or events outside HG's firmographic/technographic/intent datasets. Runs a live search (Tavily) and returns relevant results with title, URL, a content snippet, and an optional AI-generated answer summary. Use this when: you need current/breaking news, background on a person or topic, or any fact that lives on the open web rather than in HG's structured data. Do NOT use this when a purpose-built HG tool covers the request — reach for company_firmographic (company profile/size/HQ/industry), company_technographic (installed technologies), company_intent (buying signals), search_companies (find companies by criteria), or sec_full_text_search / company_contracts (filings, contracts) instead, since those return richer, structured, billable HG data. Cost: 0.05 credits (searchDepth='basic') or 0.10 credits (searchDepth='advanced' deep extraction). Set includeRawContent=true to also get full cleaned page content (no extra credit cost, slightly higher latency).

Credits

0.05 / 0.10 — 0.05 per basic search, 0.10 per advanced extraction. See the full credit table for how AI Credits work.

Parameters

Name	Type	Default	Description
query Required	string	-	Natural-language web search query. Required, non-empty (whitespace-only is rejected), max 500 chars. Be specific — include names, dates, or qualifiers ("Q3 2025 Cisco layoffs", not "Cisco news") for sharper results.
maxResults	integer	5	Maximum number of results to return, 1-20 (default 5). Raise for broad topic scans; keep low for a quick fact check.
includeRawContent	boolean	false	When true, each result also includes the full cleaned page body (rawContent), not just a short snippet — use it when you need to read/quote the source. Default false. No extra Tavily credit cost; adds a little latency. Pair with searchDepth='advanced' for best extraction.
searchDepth	string	basic	Search thoroughness. 'basic' (0.05 credits, default) is fast and fine for most lookups; 'advanced' (0.10 credits) does deeper crawling with higher-quality content extraction — recommended when includeRawContent is true or the topic is niche/hard to find.

Required Integrations

This tool is only available when your organization has the following integration configured in the Phoenix Integrations settings:

• Tavily Search (tavily)

Use Cases

• Find recent news or announcements about a company, person, or product not covered by HG data
• Get general facts or background on a topic outside HG's firmographic/technographic/intent datasets
• Fact-check or verify a claim against current public web sources
• Read/quote a source page in full via includeRawContent=true
• Deep-dive a niche topic with searchDepth='advanced' for higher-quality extraction

Example Usage

Quick fact check on recent news

{
  "tool": "web_search",
  "arguments": {
    "query": "OpenAI GPT-5 launch date announcement 2025",
    "maxResults": 5
  }
}

Deep read of a source page, advanced extraction

{
  "tool": "web_search",
  "arguments": {
    "query": "Cisco Q3 2025 restructuring plan details",
    "searchDepth": "advanced",
    "includeRawContent": true,
    "maxResults": 3
  }
}

Response Format

Field	Type	Description
query	string	The search query that was executed
answer	string | null	AI-generated answer summarizing the search results (null when not available)
requestId	string	Unique identifier for the search request
results	array	Search results
results[].title	string	Page title
results[].url	string	Page URL
results[].content	string	Snippet of page content
results[].rawContent	string | null	Raw page content when requested (null when include_raw_content is false)
results[].score	number	Relevance score
results[].publishedDate	string	Publication date if available
images	array	Related images (when available)
images[].url	string	Image URL
images[].description	string	Image description
responseTime	number	Time taken for search in seconds

Related Tools

company_firmographic, company_technographic, company_intent, search_companies, sec_full_text_search, company_contracts