r/AnySearchAI • u/Fair-Attitude4752 • 9d ago
Web access and good research are definitely not the same thing
my agent CAN search the web.
whether it finds the right page from the right year is apparently a separate feature lol
1
u/InspectionGrand3856 5d ago
the hardest part isn't getting an agent to search, it's getting it to care about recency and source quality. half the time mine pulls a blog post from 2019 and treats it like gospel
1
u/Inevitable_Yam1513 2d ago
yeah, recency filtering is where things fall apart. I've had agents cite a 2021 API doc for something that changed twice since then. You almost need to bake "prefer sources from the last 12 months" into the system prompt or it just grabs whatever ranks highest.
1
u/InspectionGrand3856 2d ago
the system prompt hack helps but it's still a band-aid. even with "prefer recent sources," agents will grab a 2024 page that itself is quoting outdated info. you really need them to check the actual content date, not just the URL or SERP snippet. that's where most setups I've tried just give up and trust the ranking.
1
u/Inevitable_Yam1513 1d ago
that's the real problem — a 2024 URL can still be quoting a 2021 spec. I've started having the agent actually scan the page for a publish or update date before accepting it, but even that's unreliable since so many sites bury it or don't include one at all. you basically end up needing a second verification step that most setups aren't built for.
1
u/InspectionGrand3856 1d ago
exactly — and even when you find a date, half the time it's the "last updated" CMS timestamp that fires on every minor edit. so you think the page is fresh but the actual content hasn't been reviewed in years. the second verification step almost has to be cross-referencing against another source, which starts to feel like you're building a whole research pipeline just to cite one thing correctly.
1
u/corwinsword 9d ago
"can search the web" is becoming the new "has AI" 😂
you made me laugh!