Web Search MCP

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides web search functionality by scraping Google, DuckDuckGo, and Bing search results through a headless browser.

Features

• Multi-Engine Search: Searches Google, DuckDuckGo, and Bing with automatic fallback when an engine is blocked or returns nothing

• Structured Results: Titles, URLs, domains, snippets, and rankings — with redirect URLs unwrapped to their real destinations

• Web Page Content: Fetch and extract text content from any webpage

• Pluggable Browser Backends: Selenium + headless Chrome (default) or the lightweight Obscura headless browser, selected via an environment variable

• MCP Compatible: Fully compatible with Claude Desktop and other MCP clients

Related MCP server: Web Search MCP Server

Tools Available

search_web

Search the web across multiple engines (Google → DuckDuckGo → Bing) with automatic fallback and return structured results.

Parameters:

• query (string): The search query string

• max_results (int, optional): Maximum number of results to return (default: 10, max: 100)

• include_snippets (bool, optional): Whether to include text snippets (default: true)

Returns:

• List of search results with:

  • title: Page title

  • url: Full URL (redirect wrappers resolved to the real destination)

  • domain: Domain name

  • snippet: Text snippet (if enabled)

  • rank: Search result ranking

  • source_engine: Which engine produced the result (google, duckduckgo, or bing)

get_webpage_content

Fetch and return the text content of a webpage.

Parameters:

• url (string): The URL of the webpage to fetch

• max_length (int, optional): Maximum content length (default: 5000, max: 20000)

Returns:

• Dictionary with:

  • url: The requested URL

  • title: Page title

  • content: Extracted text content

  • length: Content length in characters

get_search_engine_status

Report the active browser backend and the availability of each search engine.

Returns:

• Dictionary with a backend key (selenium or obscura) plus each engine name mapped to available or blocked.

reset_search_engines

Clear the list of engines marked as blocked during the session (useful if an engine recovers).

Returns:

• A status message string.

Installation

1. Install dependencies:

   # Using uv (recommended)
   uv sync
   
   # Or using pip
   pip install -e .

2. Install a browser backend (pick one):

   • Selenium (default) — requires Chrome:

     • On macOS: brew install --cask google-chrome

     • On Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

     • On Windows: Download from the Google Chrome website

     ChromeDriver is downloaded and managed automatically by webdriver-manager.

   • Obscura — no Chrome required. See the Browser Backends section below.

Usage

Running the MCP Server

# Run directly
python main.py

# Or using the installed script
web-search-mcp

The server will start and listen for MCP connections.

Using with Claude Desktop

Add this configuration to your Claude Desktop MCP settings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "web-search-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["git+https://github.com/pranavms13/web-search-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Example Usage in Claude

Once connected, you can use the tools like this:

Search for "python web scraping tutorials" and show me the top 5 results.

Get the content from this webpage: https://example.com/article

Configuration

The web searcher uses these Chrome options by default:

• Headless mode (no visible browser window)

• Window size: 1920x1080

• User agent: Modern Chrome browser

• Security flags for running in containers

Browser Backends

The server can render pages with one of two interchangeable backends, selected via the BROWSER_BACKEND environment variable:

Both backends produce fully JS-rendered HTML, which is then parsed with BeautifulSoup, so search results are identical in shape regardless of backend.

Using Obscura

1. Install the Obscura binary (see its releases), e.g. on macOS:

   curl -LO https://github.com/h4ckf0r0day/obscura/releases/latest/download/obscura-x86_64-macos.tar.gz
   tar xzf obscura-x86_64-macos.tar.gz

2. Run the server with Obscura selected:

   BROWSER_BACKEND=obscura web-search-mcp

If obscura is not on your PATH, point to it explicitly with OBSCURA_BIN=/full/path/to/obscura. When the binary cannot be found, the server logs a warning and falls back to the Selenium backend automatically.

The active backend is reported by the get_search_engine_status tool under the backend key.

Error Handling

The tool includes comprehensive error handling for:

• Network timeouts

• WebDriver failures

• Page parsing errors

• Invalid URLs

Errors are logged and graceful fallbacks are provided.

Requirements

• Python 3.10+

• A browser backend: Chrome (Selenium) or the Obscura binary

• Internet connection

Dependencies

• fastmcp: MCP server framework

• selenium: Web browser automation (Selenium backend)

• beautifulsoup4: HTML parsing

• webdriver-manager: Chrome driver management (Selenium backend)

• lxml: XML/HTML parser

The Obscura backend has no Python dependency — it is invoked as an external CLI binary.

Limitations

• Search engines may rate-limit or block automated access; the multi-engine fallback mitigates but does not eliminate this

• Google in particular often blocks non-stealth headless traffic — DuckDuckGo and Bing typically remain available as fallbacks

• Results may vary based on location and each engine's ranking

• The Selenium backend requires Chrome; the Obscura backend requires the Obscura binary

Development

To modify or extend the functionality:

1. Clone the repository

2. Install in development mode: uv sync or pip install -e .

3. Make your changes

4. Run the test suite: uv run pytest test.py -q

5. Smoke-test the server: python main.py (or BROWSER_BACKEND=obscura OBSCURA_BIN=/path/to/obscura python main.py)

License

This project is licensed under MIT License. You can check it out at - LICENSE

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.