Firecrawl Build Search

Use this when the application starts with a query, not a URL.

Use This When

• the user asks a question and the product must discover sources first
• the feature needs current web results
• you want to turn a search query into a shortlist of pages for later scraping

Default Recommendations

• Use /search first when URL discovery is part of the product behavior.
• Keep search and extraction conceptually separate unless scraping search results is clearly required.
• Prefer selective follow-up extraction over broad hydration when cost or latency matters.

Common Product Patterns

• answer generation with cited sources
• company, competitor, or topic discovery
• research workflows that produce a shortlist before deeper extraction
• query-to-URL pipelines for later /scrape or /interact

Escalation Rules

• If you already have the URL, use firecrawl-build-scrape.
• If the result page then requires clicks or form interaction, escalate to firecrawl-build-interact.
• If the search target is a known site and you only need URLs on that site, firecrawl-build-map may be a better fit.

Implementation Notes

• Treat /search as discovery, ranking, and source selection.
• Be explicit about whether the product needs snippets, URLs, or full result content.
• Keep the query contract stable so downstream scraping logic stays predictable.

Docs (Source of Truth)

Read the docs for request/response schemas, parameters, and SDK examples before writing integration code:

• docs.firecrawl.dev/features/search

See Also

• firecrawl-build
• firecrawl-build-scrape
• firecrawl-build-map