Search options

Search the web through any provider with one call: result count, search depth, effort, recency and refused values.

response = router.search(
    "nvidia q3 earnings",
    max_results=10,
    search_depth="fast",  # "lite" | "fast" | "deep"
    include_domains=["reuters.com", "bloomberg.com"],
    exclude_domains=["example.com"],
    country="US",
    locale="en",
    recency="week",  # "day" | "week" | "month" | "year"
    effort="low",  # "low" | "medium" | "high" | "max"
)

Every option except query is optional. Which ones a given provider maps is in the search support table; setting one it does not map raises rather than being ignored, and so does a value it cannot serve (a depth level it lacks, a country off its list) before anything is sent, so auto passes that backend over.

That is the whole surface. It is deliberately small: these are the options that mean the same thing on every backend, so code written against them keeps working when you switch providers. search_depth is how much text comes back per result; effort is how hard the backend looks. The exact field each backend sends is in its contracts/search/<name>.json.

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Search depth

Three levels, each defined by size, mapped onto each backend’s own knobs. A backend whose longest body is short of a page refuses deep rather than serving less under its name.

Depth	What you get	Nimble	Tavily	You.com, You.com MCP	Exa, Exa MCP	WebIQ	Parallel	Perplexity	Keenable	Brave	DeepSeek
lite	A snippet, up to about 500 characters	lite	basic, cut to 500	no extraction, cut to 500	highlights ≤ 500, cut to 500	passage ≤ 500	excerpts ≤ 500, cut to 500	100 tokens a page	snippet ≤ 500	its snippets, cut to 500	its default
fast	A truncated body, a few thousand characters	standard	advanced	highlights	text ≤ 3,000	passage ≤ 3,000	excerpts ≤ 3,000	1,024 tokens a page	snippet ≤ 3,000	refused	refused
deep	The whole page	standard + full_content	advanced + raw content	full_page	whole text	text	refused	refused	refused	refused	need_content

Linkup, AgentCore and Parallel MCP do not map it. Where a vendor’s size setting does not bind (Tavily’s basic returns up to three chunks of about 500 characters, You.com’s snippets can run past 500, Exa’s highlights cap, Parallel’s excerpt cap and Perplexity’s token budget are soft, DeepSeek’s default carries its whole summary, and Brave has no size setting at all), WebRouter cuts lite to a snippet of about 500 characters itself; the vendor’s full text stays in raw. Unset, Exa asks for the whole text and Exa MCP for highlights, as before.

result.content always holds the fullest text available. Some backends return the body in the field others use for the snippet; that is normalized away, so content is the field to read whatever the backend did.

result.description is the provider’s snippet when it returns one as a separate field. Not every backend does at every depth: Nimble at fast returns the page body and no snippet, so description holds that body and is identical to content. Read description when you want the short form and have checked your backend supplies one; read content when you want text.

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Effort

effort is anchored on each backend’s own tiers: medium is what it does unset, low its fastest tier, max its most thorough, and high between them or the same as max. A backend with fewer tiers serves several levels with one setting rather than raising. Higher effort costs more and takes longer, by a vendor-specific amount; leave it unset unless needed.

Effort	Exa	Exa MCP	Linkup	Parallel	Perplexity	Keenable
low	lite	lite	flash	turbo	fast	realtime
medium	its default	its default	fast	fast	its default	its default
high	deep-lite	its default	standard	advanced	its default	pro
max	deep	its default	deep	advanced	its default	pro

Linkup bills deep at ten times its other depths, and Parallel advanced at five times fast. Parallel refuses low beside a domain filter with a path, which its turbo mode cannot take. The other backends have no search tier and refuse effort.

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Recency

recency keeps to sources the backend dates within the last day, week, month or year, by publication date where it has one. A backend that takes a start date gets today (UTC) minus 1, 7, 30 or 365 days.

Backend	Sent as
Nimble	time_range
Tavily	time_range with filter_by_published_date, so pages it cannot date are dropped
You.com, You.com MCP	freshness
Brave	freshness, by the date Brave holds for a page (published or last modified)
Perplexity	search_recency_filter
Exa, Exa MCP, Linkup, Parallel, AgentCore	a start date (startPublishedDate, fromDate, after_date, publishedDateFilter.from)
Keenable	published_after (1d, 7d, 1mo, 1y)
DeepSeek	after:YYYY-MM-DD in the query

WebIQ and Parallel MCP do not map it.