AI search and research
5 totalAI search engines, deep research, literature review and source organization.
AI search handles the most tiring part of ordinary search: reading a dozen pages and summarizing them yourself. Products differ widely. Some return an answer together with citation links, some produce a structured long report, and some only search papers and scholarly data.
Decide whether you need speed or reliability. For everyday facts, speed is enough. For decisions, data and citations in your writing, every cited source must open and support the claim.
Choose by the kind of question:
- One answer with sources: use AI search with citation links, and make sure the source list opens for verification.
- A research result: deep-report products split the question into sub-queries, search each and merge the findings. Slower, but structurally complete.
- Papers: academic search shows citation relationships and abstracts, and locates the origin better than general search.
- Questions about your own documents: use document Q&A, and do not upload them to public search.
- Mostly Chinese sources: prefer products usable directly from mainland China; their coverage of Chinese sites is better.
NanoAI SearchHOT
AI search from 360 that aggregates answers across sources
FreeChina mainland
Website ↗
MetasoHOT
Chinese AI search with citations, good for mapping long material
FreeChina mainland
Website ↗
No tools match in this category.Back to all →
Frequently asked questions
Does AI search invent links?
Products with retrieval usually return real sources, but mixing page content with model memory can produce unsupported sentences. Check each citation: does it actually support that sentence?
How is a deep report different from a single question?
Deep mode splits the question into sub-queries, searches them separately and merges the results. Coverage is broader and it takes longer. A single turn is faster but depends on one retrieval pass. Use deep mode for research, single questions for facts.
Can academic search show full text?
Most provide abstracts, citation relationships and open-access links. Full-text access still depends on the publisher. It helps you find the right paper, not obtain the full text.
Why do different search products return different results?
Each index covers a different set of pages, updates at a different frequency and has different Chinese coverage, so the result set differs. For important conclusions, check with two products and see whether their citations overlap.
Browse another use case
Back to the AI directory; for tools that run locally in your browser, see U2 online tools.