Internet Search
Queries a self-hosted SearXNG instance aggregating multiple search engines.
Category Routing
Always set
category
based on the nature of the query.
| Category | When to use | Engines |
|---|
general
| Default. Facts, how-tos, products, people, broad web. | Brave, Bing, DDG, Startpage, Qwant, Wikipedia… |
news
| Recent events, breaking news, anything time-sensitive. | Bing News, DDG News |
academic
| Research papers, studies, medical literature, preprints. | arXiv, Google Scholar, PubMed |
social
| Opinions, community recommendations, "what do people think about X". | Reddit |
Query Formulation
Write queries as a search engine expects — keywords, not full sentences:
# Bad
"what is the fastest async runtime for rust"
Good
"rust async runtime benchmarks 2025"
- news: include a time anchor —
"OpenAI o3 release 2025"
not just "OpenAI o3"
- academic: use field terminology —
"transformer attention efficiency survey"
- social: phrase as community search —
"reddit best mechanical keyboard 2025"
SearXNG Search Syntax (in query
)
SearXNG supports lightweight query modifiers you can embed directly into the
query
string:
| Syntax | Meaning | Examples |
|---|
!<engine>
/ !<category>
| Select engine(s) and/or a category. Chainable and inclusive; abbreviations are accepted. | !wp paris
, !wikipedia paris
, !map paris
, !map !ddg !wp paris
|
:<lang>
| Language filter | :fr !wp Wau Holland
|
Count
count=5
(default) — sufficient for most taskscount=10
— comparing many options, checking consensuscount=3
— quick fact checks
Multi-Search Strategy
Fire multiple focused searches rather than one broad one:
# Bad: one vague search
internet_search("best way to deploy Node.js")
Good: three targeted searches
internet_search("Node.js Docker deployment best practices 2025")
internet_search("Node.js PM2 vs Docker production", category="social")
internet_search("Node.js zero-downtime deployment strategies")
Combine
general
+
social
for factual + sentiment coverage:
internet_search("Bun runtime performance vs Node.js benchmarks")
internet_search("Bun runtime production experience", category="social")
When NOT to Use
- Things you already know with high confidence
- Stable API docs or well-known syntax — use training knowledge
- Repeating a search that already answered the question
Common Mistakes
| Mistake | Fix |
|---|
general
for a research paper | Use category="academic"
|
| Searching "what happened today" | Use category="news"
with a specific topic |
| One broad search for a multi-part question | Break into 2–3 focused searches |
| Repeating a failed search verbatim | Rephrase with different keywords |
count=20
for a simple fact | Default count=5
is almost always enough |
