Web Search

Coming soon

The v2 MCP API is in preview and not yet generally available. These pages document its tools and request/response shapes; live data access is limited to enrolled organizations until v2 is released.

General-purpose web search for information that is NOT in HG Insights' proprietary data — recent news, general facts, and public-web context about people, products, or events outside HG's firmographic/technographic/intent datasets. Runs a live search (Tavily) and returns relevant results (title, URL, content snippet) plus an optional AI-generated answer summary. Cost: 0.05 credits (searchDepth='basic') or 0.10 credits (searchDepth='advanced' deep extraction).

Use 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 when a purpose-built HG tool covers the request — reach for company_enrich or company_firmographic (company profile/size/HQ/industry), company_technographic (installed technologies), company_intent (buying signals), or search_companies (find companies by criteria) instead, since those return richer, structured, billable HG data. Do NOT use to search SEC filing text — use sec_full_text_search. Do NOT use for general knowledge you already know; reserve it for live/current facts.

OPERATORS: boolean exclusion syntax (-term) is NOT honored — do not assume Google-style minus-sign exclusion works; filter unwanted results yourself.

VERBOSITY: includeRawContent=true returns full cleaned page content per result (no extra Tavily cost) but can add ~10KB+ of boilerplate per result — enable it only when you need full text, and keep maxResults low. searchDepth 'advanced' improves extraction (recommended with includeRawContent) at 2x cost.

Parameters

Name	Type	Required	Default	Description
query	string	✅ Yes	-	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.
maxResults	integer	❌ No	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	❌ No	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. Can return ~10KB+ of boilerplate per result, so keep maxResults low when enabling. Pair with searchDepth='advanced' for best extraction.
searchDepth	string	❌ No	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

• 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
  }
}

Related Tools

company_enrich, company_firmographic, company_technographic, company_intent, search_companies, sec_full_text_search