docs/capabilities/web-search.mdx
Ollama's web search API can be used to augment models with the latest information to reduce hallucinations and improve accuracy.
Web search is provided as a REST API with deeper tool integrations in the Python and JavaScript libraries. This also enables models like OpenAI’s gpt-oss models to conduct long-running research tasks.
For access to Ollama's web search API, create an API key. A free Ollama account is required.
Performs a web search for a single query and returns relevant results.
POST https://ollama.com/api/web_search
query (string, required): the search query stringmax_results (integer, optional): maximum results to return (default 5, max 10)Returns an object containing:
results (array): array of search result objects, each containing:
title (string): the title of the web pageurl (string): the URL of the web pagecontent (string): relevant content snippet from the web pagecurl https://ollama.com/api/web_search \
--header "Authorization: Bearer $OLLAMA_API_KEY" \
-d '{
"query":"what is ollama?"
}'
Response
{
"results": [
{
"title": "Ollama",
"url": "https://ollama.com/",
"content": "Cloud models are now available..."
},
{
"title": "What is Ollama? Introduction to the AI model management tool",
"url": "https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/what-is-ollama",
"content": "Ariffud M. 6min Read..."
},
{
"title": "Ollama Explained: Transforming AI Accessibility and Language ...",
"url": "https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/artificial-intelligence/ollama-explained-transforming-ai-accessibility-and-language-processing/",
"content": "Data Science Data Science Projects Data Analysis..."
}
]
}
import ollama
response = ollama.web_search("What is Ollama?")
print(response)
Example output
results = [
{
"title": "Ollama",
"url": "https://ollama.com/",
"content": "Cloud models are now available in Ollama..."
},
{
"title": "What is Ollama? Features, Pricing, and Use Cases - Walturn",
"url": "https://www.walturn.com/insights/what-is-ollama-features-pricing-and-use-cases",
"content": "Our services..."
},
{
"title": "Complete Ollama Guide: Installation, Usage & Code Examples",
"url": "https://collabnix.com/complete-ollama-guide-installation-usage-code-examples",
"content": "Join our Discord Server..."
}
]
More Ollama Python example
import { Ollama } from "ollama";
const client = new Ollama();
const results = await client.webSearch("what is ollama?");
console.log(JSON.stringify(results, null, 2));
Example output
{
"results": [
{
"title": "Ollama",
"url": "https://ollama.com/",
"content": "Cloud models are now available..."
},
{
"title": "What is Ollama? Introduction to the AI model management tool",
"url": "https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/what-is-ollama",
"content": "Ollama is an open-source tool..."
},
{
"title": "Ollama Explained: Transforming AI Accessibility and Language Processing",
"url": "https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/artificial-intelligence/ollama-explained-transforming-ai-accessibility-and-language-processing/",
"content": "Ollama is a groundbreaking..."
}
]
}
More Ollama JavaScript example
Fetches a single web page by URL and returns its content.
POST https://ollama.com/api/web_fetch
url (string, required): the URL to fetchReturns an object containing:
title (string): the title of the web pagecontent (string): the main content of the web pagelinks (array): array of links found on the pagecurl --request POST \
--url https://ollama.com/api/web_fetch \
--header "Authorization: Bearer $OLLAMA_API_KEY" \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
"url": "ollama.com"
}'
Response
{
"title": "Ollama",
"content": "[Cloud models](https://ollama.com/blog/cloud-models) are now available in Ollama...",
"links": [
"http://ollama.com/",
"http://ollama.com/models",
"https://github.com/ollama/ollama"
]
from ollama import web_fetch
result = web_fetch('https://ollama.com')
print(result)
Result
WebFetchResponse(
title='Ollama',
content='[Cloud models](https://ollama.com/blog/cloud-models) are now available in Ollama\n\n**Chat & build
with open models**\n\n[Download](https://ollama.com/download) [Explore
models](https://ollama.com/models)\n\nAvailable for macOS, Windows, and Linux',
links=['https://ollama.com/', 'https://ollama.com/models', 'https://github.com/ollama/ollama']
)
import { Ollama } from "ollama";
const client = new Ollama();
const fetchResult = await client.webFetch("https://ollama.com");
console.log(JSON.stringify(fetchResult, null, 2));
Result
{
"title": "Ollama",
"content": "[Cloud models](https://ollama.com/blog/cloud-models) are now available in Ollama...",
"links": [
"https://ollama.com/",
"https://ollama.com/models",
"https://github.com/ollama/ollama"
]
}
Use Ollama’s web search API as a tool to build a mini search agent.
This example uses Alibaba’s Qwen 3 model with 4B parameters.
ollama pull qwen3:4b
from ollama import chat, web_fetch, web_search
available_tools = {'web_search': web_search, 'web_fetch': web_fetch}
messages = [{'role': 'user', 'content': "what is ollama's new engine"}]
while True:
response = chat(
model='qwen3:4b',
messages=messages,
tools=[web_search, web_fetch],
think=True
)
if response.message.thinking:
print('Thinking: ', response.message.thinking)
if response.message.content:
print('Content: ', response.message.content)
messages.append(response.message)
if response.message.tool_calls:
print('Tool calls: ', response.message.tool_calls)
for tool_call in response.message.tool_calls:
function_to_call = available_tools.get(tool_call.function.name)
if function_to_call:
args = tool_call.function.arguments
result = function_to_call(**args)
print('Result: ', str(result)[:200]+'...')
# Result is truncated for limited context lengths
messages.append({'role': 'tool', 'content': str(result)[:2000 * 4], 'tool_name': tool_call.function.name})
else:
messages.append({'role': 'tool', 'content': f'Tool {tool_call.function.name} not found', 'tool_name': tool_call.function.name})
else:
break
Result
Thinking: Okay, the user is asking about Ollama's new engine. I need to figure out what they're referring to. Ollama is a company that develops large language models, so maybe they've released a new model or an updated version of their existing engine....
Tool calls: [ToolCall(function=Function(name='web_search', arguments={'max_results': 3, 'query': 'Ollama new engine'}))]
Result: results=[WebSearchResult(content='# New model scheduling\n\n## September 23, 2025\n\nOllama now includes a significantly improved model scheduling system. Ahead of running a model, Ollama’s new engine
Thinking: Okay, the user asked about Ollama's new engine. Let me look at the search results.
First result is from September 23, 2025, talking about new model scheduling. It mentions improved memory management, reduced crashes, better GPU utilization, and multi-GPU performance. Examples show speed improvements and accurate memory reporting. Supported models include gemma3, llama4, qwen3, etc...
Content: Ollama has introduced two key updates to its engine, both released in 2025:
1. **Enhanced Model Scheduling (September 23, 2025)**
- **Precision Memory Management**: Exact memory allocation reduces out-of-memory crashes and optimizes GPU utilization.
- **Performance Gains**: Examples show significant speed improvements (e.g., 85.54 tokens/s vs 52.02 tokens/s) and full GPU layer utilization.
- **Multi-GPU Support**: Improved efficiency across multiple GPUs, with accurate memory reporting via tools like `nvidia-smi`.
- **Supported Models**: Includes `gemma3`, `llama4`, `qwen3`, `mistral-small3.2`, and more.
2. **Multimodal Engine (May 15, 2025)**
- **Vision Support**: First-class support for vision models, including `llama4:scout` (109B parameters), `gemma3`, `qwen2.5vl`, and `mistral-small3.1`.
- **Multimodal Tasks**: Examples include identifying animals in multiple images, answering location-based questions from videos, and document scanning.
These updates highlight Ollama's focus on efficiency, performance, and expanded capabilities for both text and vision tasks.
Web search results can return thousands of tokens. It is recommended to increase the context length of the model to at least ~32000 tokens. Search agents work best with full context length. Ollama's cloud models run at the full context length.
You can enable web search in any MCP client through the Python MCP server.
Ollama's web search can be integrated with Cline easily using the MCP server configuration.
Manage MCP Servers > Configure MCP Servers > Add the following configuration:
{
"mcpServers": {
"web_search_and_fetch": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "uv",
"args": ["run", "path/to/web-search-mcp.py"],
"env": { "OLLAMA_API_KEY": "your_api_key_here" }
}
}
}
Ollama works well with OpenAI's Codex tool.
Add the following configuration to ~/.codex/config.toml
[mcp_servers.web_search]
command = "uv"
args = ["run", "path/to/web-search-mcp.py"]
env = { "OLLAMA_API_KEY" = "your_api_key_here" }
Ollama can integrate with Goose via its MCP feature.
Ollama can be integrated into most of the tools available either through direct integration of Ollama's API, Python / JavaScript libraries, OpenAI compatible API, and MCP server integration.