Web search: the bot looking things up on the public internet

Overview

Web search gives the bot two tools for querying the public internet — things it does not know and that do not live in your account: news, market prices, public company data, documentation, anything that changed after the model was trained.

Both are read-only and send the contact nothing: they return text to the model, which then decides what (if anything) to say. That is also why they stay available when the bot delegates to a sub-agent.

For your account's own content — contacts, deals, catalog, history — the bot has dedicated tools, and the knowledge base holds your material. Web search is for what lives outside.

Prerequisites

• Maestro enabled and a configured bot.
• A Tavily API key available to the bot (see "The key" below).
• The web_search and/or web_fetch tools enabled in the bot's tools grid — without them, nothing in this section has any effect.

Step by step

1. In the bot's configuration, open the Tools grid and enable Search the web and/or Read a web page (Knowledge category).
2. Scroll to the Web search section. If neither tool is on, a notice tells you nothing there will take effect yet.
3. Adjust Search depth and Results per search.
4. To restrict it, fill in Search only these domains and/or Never these domains.
5. Save.

To switch search off entirely, disable both tools in the grid. Your settings are kept for whenever you turn them back on.

Settings & options

How the two domain lists combine

They do not work the same way, and the difference is deliberate:

• Search only these domains is a restriction. When you fill it in, the bot's own list is ignored — it cannot search anywhere else, not even if it asks. A restriction the model can widen is not a restriction.
• Never these domains is a blocklist. Your domains always apply, and the bot may still add more for a specific query.

Type domains separated by commas or newlines. https://, www. and any path after the slash are stripped automatically — Tavily matches hosts, so https://example.com/pricing becomes example.com.

What the bot decides (and you do not)

• How many results to request for that query: it may ask for fewer than your ceiling, never more.
• The topic of the query (general, news or finance) and the time window (past day, week, month or year), decided per question. Neither has a fixed per-bot field today — the default is general, with no time filter.
• Which URLs to read with web_fetch — at most 5 per call.

The key (Tavily)

Search needs a Tavily key. It is looked up in this order:

1. The bot's own key (API keys section, provider tavily).
2. Your account's key, under Integrations.
3. The installation's key, configured by the operator.

With none of them, the tools reply that search is not configured and the bot carries on with what it already knows — the conversation does not break.

Use cases

• Technical support — check a partner's public documentation before advising the customer.
• Pre-sales — look up public data about the contact's company to qualify better.
• News and prices — answer about something that changed after the model was trained.
• Restricted base — put your own site and documentation in Search only these domains: the bot searches only there, like an internal search over public content.

Tips, limits & best practices

• Every search consumes Tavily credits. Advanced depth and a high result count multiply the spend — start on Basic with the default of 5.
• An extra result is also extra context in the turn: 20 results can push the conversation's own information out.
• web_fetch reads at most 5 pages per call, and each page's text is truncated to fit the turn.
• A URL that could not be read is reported to the bot, not silently dropped — so it does not answer as if it had checked.
• The public web is not a source of truth about your operation. For your prices, policies and lead times, use the knowledge base.
• Pair it with turn verification if you want to hold replies that claim something the turn did not establish.

Troubleshooting

• "I configured everything and the bot never searches" — are the web_search/web_fetch tools enabled in the grid? The notice in the section tells you when they are not.
• "Search is not configured" — there is no Tavily key at any of the three levels.
• "The API key is invalid" — the key exists but was rejected; issue a new one at Tavily.
• "The plan limit was reached" — the Tavily account is out of credits.
• "Search is rate limited right now" — too many calls in a short window; it retries later.
• "It searched a site I did not want" — add the domain to Never these domains, or lock everything down with Search only these domains.
• "Results come from another country/language" — make the query more specific in the bot's instructions and restrict by domain.

See also

• What Maestro AI and the Account Brain are
• Maestro tools by module
• Knowledge base and ontology
• Verifying what the bot claims