Web Search

web_search — live web search / browse the internet / find recent news or public facts not in HG Insights' data. Runs a live Tavily search and returns results (title, URL, snippet) plus an optional AI answer summary. Cost: 0.05 credits (basic) or 0.10 credits (advanced, higher relevance).

Use when: you need current/breaking news, background on a person or topic, or any fact on the open web rather than HG's structured data.

Do NOT use when a purpose-built HG tool covers the request — reach for company_enrich/company_firmographic (profile/size/HQ/industry), company_technographic (installed tech), company_intent (buying signals), or search_companies instead, since those return richer structured HG data. Do NOT use to search SEC filing text — use sec_full_text_search. Do NOT use for general knowledge you already know.

OPERATORS: boolean exclusion (-term) is NOT honored — filter unwanted results yourself.

VERBOSITY: includeRawContent=true returns the full cleaned page body (no extra cost) but can add ~10KB+ per result — cap with maxContentLength, keep max_results low, and restrict sources with allowedDomains. searchDepth='advanced' improves relevance and snippet quality (not raw-page extraction) at 2x cost.

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. Boolean exclusion (-term) is NOT honored — do not rely on Google-style minus-sign syntax; filter unwanted results yourself.
max_results	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. WARNING: raw content can be very large (100KB+ has been observed) and may exceed MCP token limits — cap it with maxContentLength (default 10KB per result) and keep max_results low.
searchDepth	string	basic	Search thoroughness — the latency-vs-relevance tradeoff. 'basic' (0.05 credits, default) is fast and fine for most lookups; 'advanced' (0.10 credits) trades latency for higher relevance, returning more semantically relevant content snippets per result. Note: 'advanced' improves result relevance and the short content snippet, NOT full-page rawContent extraction — rawContent depth is the same at either setting.
allowedDomains	array	-	Restrict results to these domains (e.g. ["sec.gov", "federalregister.gov"]). Use bare hostnames, not URLs or wildcards — a malformed entry simply matches nothing (fails to fewer results, never to an unlisted domain). Omit (or pass []) for the whole web. Maps to Tavily includeDomains; subdomains are included. Max 50 domains.
maxContentLength	integer	10000	Max characters of rawContent kept per result (default 10000, max 100000). Only applies when includeRawContent=true; caps the token cost of full-page bodies. Does not affect the short content snippet, and does not reduce Tavily credit cost — truncation is applied to the response after the call.

Required Integrations

This tool is only available when your organization has the following integration configured in the HG Insights 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 (cap size with maxContentLength)
• Deep-dive a niche topic with searchDepth='advanced' for higher-relevance results
• Restrict research to trusted sources with allowedDomains (e.g. ['sec.gov'])

Example Usage

Quick fact check on recent news

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

Deep read of a source page, advanced relevance with a capped body

{
  "tool": "web_search",
  "arguments": {
    "query": "Cisco Q3 2025 restructuring plan details",
    "searchDepth": "advanced",
    "includeRawContent": true,
    "maxContentLength": 5000,
    "max_results": 3
  }
}

Domain-restricted regulatory research

{
  "tool": "web_search",
  "arguments": {
    "query": "SEC climate disclosure rule effective date",
    "allowedDomains": [
      "sec.gov",
      "federalregister.gov"
    ],
    "max_results": 5
  }
}

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 includeRawContent is false). When includeRawContent is true it is truncated to maxContentLength characters (default 10000).
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_enrich, company_firmographic, company_technographic, company_intent, search_companies, sec_full_text_search