Web Search

WebSearchTools is a versatile toolkit that enables an Agent to search the web using multiple search backends. It uses the DDGS meta-search library which supports backends like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Brave, Yandex, Yahoo, and more.

This is the recommended toolkit for general web search functionality. For DuckDuckGo-specific usage, see DuckDuckGoTools.

Prerequisites

The following example requires the ddgs library. To install it, run the following command:

uv pip install -U ddgs

Example

from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.tools.websearch import WebSearchTools

# Basic usage with auto backend selection
agent = Agent(tools=[WebSearchTools()])
agent.print_response("What's happening in France?", markdown=True)

# Use a specific backend (e.g., google, bing, brave, yandex)
agent_google = Agent(
    tools=[WebSearchTools(backend="google")]
)
agent_google.print_response("Latest AI news", markdown=True)

Toolkit Params

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
enable_search	bool	True	Enable web search function.
enable_news	bool	True	Enable news search function.
backend	str	"auto"	The backend to use for searching. Options: "auto", "duckduckgo", "google", "bing", "brave", "yandex", "yahoo", etc.
modifier	Optional[str]	None	A modifier to prepend to search queries.
fixed_max_results	Optional[int]	None	A fixed number of maximum results.
proxy	Optional[str]	None	Proxy to use for requests.
timeout	Optional[int]	10	Maximum seconds to wait for a response.
verify_ssl	bool	True	Whether to verify SSL certificates.
timelimit	Optional[str]	None	Time limit for results. "d" (day), "w" (week), "m" (month), "y" (year).
region	Optional[str]	None	Region for results (e.g., "us-en", "uk-en", "ru-ru").

Toolkit Functions

Function	Description
web_search	Search the web for a query. Parameters include query (str) for the search query and max_results (int, default=5) for maximum results. Returns JSON formatted search results.
search_news	Get the latest news from the web. Parameters include query (str) for the search query and max_results (int, default=5) for maximum results. Returns JSON formatted news results.

Supported Backends

The backend parameter supports the following options:

Backend	Description
auto	Automatically selects an available backend
duckduckgo	DuckDuckGo search engine
google	Google search engine
bing	Microsoft Bing search engine
brave	Brave Search
yandex	Yandex search engine
yahoo	Yahoo search engine

Developer Resources

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• View Cookbook