Search web, news, or image sources and return ranked results. Operators include quoted phrases, `-term`, `site:host`, `inurl:term`, `intitle:term`, and `related:host`; the set is non-exhaustive. `includeDomains` and `excludeDomains` are mutually exclusive hostname filters; categories limit results to GitHub, research, PDF, or developer sources.
For a programming question, add `categories: ["developer"]`. It searches an index of repositories, GitHub issues, merged pull requests, repository READMEs, and curated documentation sites, and returns the hits in `data.web` with `category: "developer"`.
`categories: ["research"]` restricts these web results to research-affiliated websites and returns page snippets. The `firecrawl_research_*` tools are a separate surface that searches paper abstracts and full text across biomedical (PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv) and arXiv literature.
Each web result is a title, URL, and description, not the page. Add `scrapeOptions` to attach page content in the same call; those fetches ignore `maxAge`, so use `firecrawl_scrape` when you need a live fetch. Returns source-type result groups and usage metadata. Authenticated responses can include an `id` for optional search feedback.