What is AI Web Search?
AI web search lets a chatbot browse the internet in real time to find current information before answering your question. Instead of relying only on its training data (which has a cutoff date), the AI searches the web, reads relevant pages, and synthesizes the results into a single response with source links. This means you get up to date answers about news, prices, events, and recent developments.
Common use cases- Checking current facts: stock prices, weather, sports scores, election results
- Researching recent news or announcements that happened after the AI's training cutoff
- Finding and comparing products, services, or reviews from multiple sources
Step 1: Query detected
Gemini identifies that your question benefits from current, real time information
Step 2: Google Search grounding
Gemini queries Google's search index, the most comprehensive web index available
Step 3: Cited response
Delivers an answer with clickable source links so you can verify every claim
Why Google Search matters here
ChatGPT uses a Google/Bing backend, and Claude uses Brave Search. Gemini is the only major chatbot with direct access to Google's own search index, giving it the broadest and most up to date web coverage for grounded answers.