Clarify-Then-Search is a benchmark that tests whether large language models can ask clarification questions to improve the usefulness of deep search results. It uses 518 real-world query pairs from Baidu, where each intent query is paired with an underspecified version. The evaluation involves a clarifier asking up to three questions, a user answerer providing only explicit information, and a rewriter generating a new query that is then searched; performance is measured by a weighted nugget-recall score.
By Deqiang Huang, Jingbo Zhou, Xinjiang Lu, Tong Xu, Hua Wu, Enhong Chen
arXiv:2607. 28229v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The web is increasingly accessed by AI agents rather than humans.
By Luigi Sigillo, Matteo Silvestri, Francesco Tabaro, Rajat Bhatnagar, Syed Irtaza Mubashar, Matt Jeffryes, Daljit Nijjer, Vittorio Perera, Ola Spjuth, Julio Saez-Rodriguez, Melissa Harrison, Fabio Petroni
arXiv:2609.14412v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Deep research agents answer complex questions through iterative loops of searching, reading, and reasoning. Recent work on reasoning-intensive benchmar...
By Radin Hamidi Rad, Amin Bigdeli, Negar Arabzadeh, Sajad Ebrahimi, Charles L. A. Clarke, Benjamin C. M. Fung, Ebrahim Bagheri
arXiv:2606. 12871v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Search Agents (SAs) typically leverage large language models (LLMs) to support complex information-seeking tasks by autonomously exploring web sources and synthesizing information into comprehensive responses.
By Jingxuan Han, Wei Liu, Mingyang Zhu, Youpeng Wang, Ziwen Wang, Lin Qiu, Xuezhi Cao, Xunliang Cai, Zheren Fu, Licheng Zhang, Zhendong Mao
arXiv:2608. 02751v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Existing deep-research agents use a Search--Visit workflow that retrieves whole webpages without considering the structure they expose through titles, headings, sections, and metadata.
By Shuai Wang, Haodong Chen, Yu Yin, Shengyao Zhuang, Bevan Koopman, Guido Zuccon
The study examines how conversational LLM agents—specifically ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and DeepSeek—use Web search, combining real user interactions with controlled API experiments. It finds that agents differ in when they decide to search, how they craft queries, and which domains they favor, and that more frequent searching does not always improve answer quality. While most responses are grounded in search results, some claims are unsupported, raising attribution concerns.
By Mahsa Amani, Seungeon Lee, Abhisek Dash, Asmaa El Fraihi, Yunah Jang, Elisabeth Kirsten, Qinyuan Wu, Krishna P. Gummadi, Manish Gupta, Abhilasha Ravichander, Muhammad Bilal Zafar, Soumi Das
arXiv:2605. 12887v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Web-enabled LLM agents are changing how online information influences search outcomes.
By Hengwei Ye, Jiasheng Mao, Zhenhan Guan, Zheng Tian
arXiv:2608. 02751v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Existing deep-research agents use a search-visit workflow that retrieves and reads whole pages, without considering the addressable structure that web sources expose through titles, headings, sections, and metadata.
By Shuai Wang, Haodong Chen, Yu Yin, Shengyao Zhuang, Bevan Koopman, Guido Zuccon
arXiv:2603. 27476v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: AI-powered people search platforms are increasingly used in recruiting, sales prospecting, and professional networking, yet no widely accepted benchmark exists for evaluating their performance.
By Wei Wang, Tianyu Shi, Shuai Zhang, Boyang Xia, Zequn Xie, Chenyu Zeng, Qi Zhang, Lynn Ai, Yaqi Yu, Kaiming Zhang, Feiyue Tang, Lei Ding
arXiv:2608. 06202v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) benchmark evaluations are routinely used to support claims about model safety, reliability, and deployment readiness.
By Ro Encarnaci\'on, Tina Behzad, Emma Lurie, Dana\'e Metaxa
arXiv:2608. 12282v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agents deployed in enterprise settings must reason across structured APIs and document collections, yet existing benchmarks evaluate these capabilities in isolation.
By Ankita Rajaram Naik, Anupama Murthi, Benjamin Elder, Siyu Huo, Raavi Gupta, Abhinav Jain, Praveen Venkateswaran, Abdulhamid Adebayo, Danish Contractor
arXiv:2606. 05241v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Public benchmarks enable fair and reproducible evaluation of LLM reasoning, but they become fragile for deep research agents that actively search the web during inference.
By Yongjie Wang, Xinyue Zhang, Kunhong Yao, Zhiwei Zeng, Kaisong Song, Jun Lin, Zhiqi Shen