Web Search

SurfSense performs public web search through the built-in Google Search specialist. When the assistant needs real-time or public information (news, prices, weather, exchange rates, current events, or "who ranks for X"), it delegates the query to the Google Search subagent, which returns ranked results the assistant can cite and hand off for crawling.

There is nothing to configure — Google web search is available in every workspace out of the box.

How It Works

When the assistant decides a request needs the open web:

1. The main agent delegates the query to the google_search specialist.
2. The specialist runs a Google search and returns ranked result items (title, URL, snippet).
3. The assistant summarizes the findings and can follow up by crawling a specific result page.

SearXNG fallback

Google occasionally walls every exit IP, in which case a search would return nothing. The Docker stack bundles a SearXNG container that serves organic results as a last resort in that case. It works out of the box — there is nothing to configure.

It only fires after Google's own retry ladder is exhausted, and it only serves organic results plus query suggestions. Ads, People Also Ask, AI Overviews, and result totals are Google-only and come back empty, so requests that specifically ask for paid ads are never served from the fallback. Fallback pages are tagged with resultsProvider: "searxng" and are not billed at the Google SERP rate.

The container is internal-only in production. The dev and deps-only stacks publish its UI on http://localhost:8888 (SEARXNG_PORT) if you want to query it directly.

Configuration

The instance's own settings live in docker/searxng/settings.yml. Two entries there are load-bearing. search.formats includes json, which is the API the scraper calls — remove it and every request comes back HTTP 403, with no environment variable to re-enable it. And the google engine is disabled on purpose: this instance only runs after Google walled you, so querying Google again from the same address is self-defeating. DuckDuckGo, Brave, Bing, and Wikipedia tolerate server IPs far better and are what make the fallback useful.

SearXNG reads that file only at startup, so restart the container after editing it.

Using your own instance

Point SEARXNG_URL at it and, if you like, remove the searxng service from your compose file. Your instance must have json in search.formats for the same reason as above; if it does not, SurfSense logs the 403 and names the setting.

Nothing depends on the service being healthy, so a SearXNG that is down or misconfigured degrades searches to Google alone rather than blocking the stack.

Google web search is workspace-scoped and is not available in the free / anonymous (no-login) chat, which answers purely from the model's own knowledge.

Still want Tavily or Linkup?

If you relied on Tavily or Linkup, you can add them back yourself through the generic Custom MCP connector (the MCPs card in the Connectors dashboard). Both providers expose a hosted MCP server that authenticates with an API key sent as a request header:

Steps:

1. Open the Connectors dashboard and choose MCPs (Custom MCP connector).
2. Enter the provider's MCP server URL from the table above.
3. Add an Authorization header with the value Bearer <your API key>.
4. Save. The provider's search tools become available to the assistant through the connected-apps specialist.

Deprecated connectors

The following connectors are deprecated. Existing rows remain readable/manageable, but new connections are refused (HTTP 410), and their catalog cards show a Deprecated badge:

• Tavily — add via Custom MCP connector (see above).
• Linkup — add via Custom MCP connector (see above).
• Baidu Search — no longer bundled; use the built-in Google Search or a Custom MCP connector for a provider of your choice.
• SearXNG — no longer a connectable source. The bundled searxng container still ships, but serves only as the Google Search scraper's fallback (see above).