> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.crew.you/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.crew.you/tools/web-search.md).

# Web Search & Research

Crew has powerful research capabilities — search the web, read web pages, browse sites with a real browser, find news, explore academic papers, search X (Twitter), and research YouTube content.

## Web Search

Search the internet and get summarized results:

> "Search for the best project management tools in 2026."

> "Find information about renewable energy trends in Asia."

> "What are the current exchange rates for USD to EUR?"

### Advanced Search Options

**Filter by freshness:**

> "Find news about AI regulation from the past week."

> "Search for articles published today about the stock market."

**Filter by country/language:**

> "Search for restaurants in San Francisco (Yelp results preferred)."

### How It Works

Crew searches the web, reads the top results, and synthesizes a clear answer. You get the information you need without clicking through dozens of links.

## Browser

Need to read a specific web page, or interact with a website that requires login or navigation? Crew has two browser modes:

### Page Reader

Give Crew a URL and it reads the page content instantly:

> "Read this page and summarize it: <https://example.com/article>"

> "What does this blog post say? \[URL]"

Crew navigates to the page, extracts the content, and gives you a clean summary. This works even with JavaScript-rendered pages.

### Browser Automation

For more complex tasks, Crew opens a full browser and navigates websites like a person would:

> "Go to the Airbnb website and find the best-rated apartments in Tokyo for next weekend."

> "Log into my project management tool and export the sprint report."

> "Browse this e-commerce site and compare prices for the top 5 wireless headphones."

Browser automation can handle:

* **Multi-step navigation** — clicking through pages, filling forms, scrolling
* **Login-required sites** — when you provide credentials, Crew can log in and gather data
* **CAPTCHA handling** — automatically switches to full browser mode to solve CAPTCHAs
* **Data extraction** — results are delivered as files (CSV, screenshots) saved to My Files

### Website Crawler

Need info spread across a whole website? Crew can crawl multiple pages at once:

> "Crawl the documentation at docs.example.com and create a summary of all API endpoints."

> "Gather all product pages from this website and create a comparison spreadsheet."

## News Search

Get the latest news on any topic:

> "What's happening with AI regulation in the EU?"

> "Latest news about Apple's product launches."

> "Give me today's top business news."

### Filtering

> "Find news about electric vehicles from the past 24 hours."

> "Search for Bay Area tech industry news."

## X (Twitter) Search

Search tweets, see what's trending, and look up specific posts — all without leaving Crew:

> "What are people saying about the new iPhone on X?"

> "Show me trending topics on X right now."

> "Find the most popular tweets about AI from this week."

Results are ranked by engagement so the most relevant posts appear first.

## Academic Paper Search

Crew searches across multiple academic databases for research papers:

### Databases

* **OpenAlex** — Comprehensive academic database
* **arXiv** — Preprints in physics, math, CS, and more
* **PubMed** — Biomedical and life sciences
* **CrossRef** — Cross-publisher metadata

### Examples

> "Find recent papers about large language models and hallucination reduction."

> "Search for medical research on intermittent fasting published in 2025-2026."

> "Find the most cited papers on quantum computing from the last 3 years."

### Advanced Options

> "Search arXiv for papers about transformer architectures, open access only, sorted by date."

> "Find papers about CRISPR gene editing on PubMed, 2024-2026, sorted by citations."

### Paper Details

> "Get the abstract and citation count for this paper: \[paper ID]"

> "Show me the references cited by this paper."

> "What papers have cited this research?"

## YouTube Research

Go beyond video summaries — search YouTube, explore channels, and browse video libraries:

### Video Search

> "Search YouTube for the best tutorials on Python data analysis."

> "Find YouTube videos comparing React vs Vue in 2026."

### Channel Exploration

> "Show me the latest videos from the Google DeepMind channel."

> "What are the most popular videos from this YouTube channel? \[URL]"

### Video Summary

> "Summarize this YouTube video: \[URL]"

> "What are the main points of this video? \[URL]"

Crew extracts the full transcript (if available), video metadata (title, channel, duration, views), and provides a concise summary.

### Use Cases

> "I don't have time to watch this 1-hour lecture. Give me the key takeaways."

> "Transcribe this YouTube tutorial and create step-by-step instructions."

> "Compare the main arguments from these two YouTube videos: \[URL1] \[URL2]"

## Social Media Analysis

Analyze posts and content from social media platforms:

### Supported Platforms

* TikTok
* Instagram
* Twitter/X
* Facebook

### Examples

> "Analyze this TikTok post: \[URL]"

> "What's this Instagram post about? \[URL]"

Returns metadata (author, engagement stats, caption, hashtags) and optional transcript/captions for video content.

## Practical Research Workflows

### Competitive Analysis

> "Search the web for our top 3 competitors (Company A, B, C). Find their latest product updates, pricing changes, and news. Create a comparison summary."

### Market Research

> "Research the current state of the AI chatbot market. Find recent articles, industry reports, and analyst opinions. Summarize the key trends and market size."

### Academic Literature Review

> "I'm writing a paper on climate change adaptation in Southeast Asia. Search OpenAlex and PubMed for relevant papers from 2023-2026. Summarize the top 10 most relevant ones."

### Content Curation

> "Find the 5 best articles about productivity tips published this month. Summarize each one and save the links as bookmarks."

### News Monitoring

> "Set up a daily task at 9 AM that searches for news about 'artificial intelligence' and 'healthcare', then sends me a summary on Telegram."

## Tips

* **Be specific**: "Search for enterprise SaaS pricing strategies" is better than "search for pricing"
* **Combine with documents**: Research a topic, then create a PDF report in one conversation
* **Use freshness filters**: For time-sensitive topics, ask for "this week" or "today" results
* **Academic research**: Specify the database if you know which one is best for your field
* **Save findings**: Ask Crew to bookmark useful links or save summaries to My Files
* **Use Deep Work for heavy research**: For reports that need multiple sources and polished output, try [Deep Work](/tools/deep-work.md) instead