---
doc_version: "1.0.0"
last_updated: "2026-07-14T15:00:57.718Z"
title: "How to Enable Web Search for Your Bot"
description: "Enable web search to supplement your ChatbotIQ bot's knowledge base with real-time web results scoped to your source domains."
keywords: [web search, real-time search, supplemental search, ChatbotIQ]
---

Web search lets your bot supplement knowledge base results with live web search, scoped to your source domains. If your website has content that changes frequently or wasn't captured in the last crawl, web search can fill the gap.

---

## Enable web search

1. Open your bot settings (gear icon in the Playground, or Edit on the Bots page).
2. Scroll to the **Web Search** section (or find it in behavior settings).
3. Toggle **Web Search Enabled** to ON.
4. Save.

---

## How it works

When web search is enabled, the bot supplements its knowledge base with live results from your source domains. This helps cover content that hasn't been indexed yet or has changed since the last crawl.

> **Important:** Web search is scoped to your source domains, it doesn't search the entire internet. It only looks for content on the same websites you've added as sources.

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## When to use web search

- **Frequently updated content** - if your website changes daily and you can't re-crawl that often.
- **Large sites** - when your plan's page limit doesn't cover your entire site, web search can find content on pages that weren't indexed.
- **Supplemental coverage** - as a safety net to catch content that the crawler might have missed.

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## When NOT to use web search

- **Internal/private sites** - web search only works for publicly accessible content.
- **If your knowledge base is comprehensive** - if your crawl covers everything, web search adds latency without benefit.

---

## Related

- [Bot Settings Reference](/reference/bot-settings/) - web search setting
- [How RAG Works](/explanation/how-rag-works/) - understand how your bot finds answers

## Sitemap

Full documentation index: [sitemap.md](/sitemap.md) and [llms.txt](/llms.txt).