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Web search guide / 2026

Web Search API for AI Agents in 2026

AI agents often need current sources before they can answer confidently. A focused search endpoint returns compact result documents without making your application depend on a search provider’s private response format.

Quick answer

Give an agent focused, source-linked search results.

Send a query to the web search endpoint and receive up to 10 ordered results as Markdown or provider-neutral schema-v1 JSON. Each result retains its source URL so agents can inspect evidence instead of relying on an uncited answer.

curl --get 'https://extractor.sh/api/search' \
  --data-urlencode 'q=best web extraction APIs for AI agents' \
  --data-urlencode 'limit=5' \
  --data-urlencode 'format=json'

Available data

What you can extract

  • Up to 10 ordered web results
  • Titles, URLs, snippets, and source metadata
  • Markdown for model context or provider-neutral schema-v1 JSON
  • A cacheable response for repeated identical searches

AI workflows

Where normalized data helps

  • Agent research and tool use
  • Source discovery before RAG ingestion
  • Current-information grounding
  • Search-enhanced generation

AI-ready output

Markdown for models. JSON for systems.

Raw HTML consumes tokens on navigation, scripts, styling, and interface labels. Clean Markdown keeps the readable hierarchy for LLM prompts and RAG chunks. Normalized JSON is better when your application needs an explicit semantic type, source, author, publication date, media, attributes, and collection items.

Always retain the canonical URL from the response. AI-generated summaries should remain traceable to the public source, especially when the underlying page can change.

Boundaries

Public data only

  • The endpoint returns public search results, not personalized browsing history.
  • A request returns at most 10 results.
  • Search results still need source evaluation before high-stakes use.

extractor.sh does not bypass CAPTCHAs, login walls, paywalls, access controls, or regional restrictions. Review the source’s terms and applicable law before collecting or reusing data.