Web search

Zoe can search the public web for things that are not in your organization's own systems — vendor documentation, an error message and its known fixes, a regulation, a news item, a public fact about a company. Web search is a separate integration your organization opts into; if it has not been added, Zoe simply will not search the web.

When Zoe searches

Your own material comes first. Zoe prefers your document repositories and your connected business systems for anything internal, and reaches for the web when the answer is genuinely public or more recent than what it already knows.

You can ask directly — look up the current Microsoft licensing terms for Teams Phone — or Zoe may go to the web on its own when a question clearly needs current public information. You can also narrow the window: only results from the last month.

Zoe can open one of the pages it found and read it in full when the snippet is not enough. It can only open pages that came back from its own search, so pasting a link and asking Zoe to read that address does not work — ask Zoe to search for the page instead.

How results are cited

Every web answer is cited. Hits are numbered in the reply and listed in the Sources side panel with the page title, the snippet Zoe used, and a link out to the original address. Links open in a new tab, and only secure web addresses become clickable.

Treat those citations as the answer's evidence. Web content is public material Zoe found, not something your organization vouches for — open the source before you rely on it for anything that matters.

Limits, in plain terms

Web search is capped, deliberately. There is a daily limit on how many searches your organization can run, and a second limit across the whole AINOW platform so no single organization can consume everyone's allowance. Both reset daily.

When a cap is reached, Zoe tells you it cannot search the web right now and answers from what it already has. There is nothing to fix on your side — try again the next day, or ask your administrator if your organization needs a larger allowance. A page Zoe already read stays in the conversation; only new searches are blocked.

What your administrator controls

An administrator adds the Web search integration in the Customer Portal and sets its policy. One organization can have one web search integration. Two settings shape what you see:

• Allowed domains — when set, searches and page reads are limited to those hostnames and their subdomains. Useful for tying Zoe to a specific vendor's documentation.
• Blocked domains — hostnames Zoe never searches or reads. Blocked wins over allowed.

If web results seem oddly narrow or a site you expected never appears, a domain policy is the likely reason; ask your administrator what is configured.

A note on what you send

Search queries and page reads leave the platform and go to a third-party search provider hosted in the United States. Keep anything you ask Zoe to look up on the web public and non-identifying: no customer names, account numbers, credentials, internal addresses, or ticket contents. For those, ask Zoe to use your connected systems and document repositories instead — see Asking well.