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Search the web with GPT for Sheets

Search the web directly in GPT for Sheets using web search models. These models use fresh web search data, which allows you to generate up-to-date responses about companies, current events, facts, and more, directly in your spreadsheet. You can also fetch content from specific URLs to extract information from web pages.

Choose the right web search model​

Choose a web search model that best fits your use case.

Get information that is not in the model's built-in knowledge:

  • Example: Finding the current CEO of a company.

  • How it works:

    All web search models can go beyond their built-in knowledge by accessing information from search engines, like Google or Bing. This allows models, which have compressed historical knowledge, to explore topics in greater depth, with more current data or with a specific focus.

    Web search models do not fetch full page content. Instead, they read search result snippets, like you would see on a Google search results page. The snippets are added to the context of the models, so they can use the information to generate a response.

  • Recommended models:

Content fetching​

Focus on specific URLs and extract content from them:

  • Example: Extracting the product name and price from the URL of a product page.

  • How it works: Some web search models can access the full content from specific URLs. The full content is added to the context of the models, so they can use it to answer questions about the content or extract information from it.

  • Recommended models:

Click here for a list of all web search models supported by GPT for Sheets.
ProviderModelWithout API keyWith API key

Perplexity

sonar

✅

✅

sonar-pro

❌

✅

sonar-reasoning

✅

✅

sonar-reasoning-pro

❌

✅

Google

gemini-2.0-flash

❌

✅

gemini-2.0-flash-lite

❌

✅

gemini-2.5-flash

✅

✅

gemini-2.5-flash-lite

❌

✅

gemini-2.5-pro

❌

✅

OpenAI

gpt-4o-mini-search-preview

✅

✅

gpt-4o-search-preview

✅

✅

gpt-5-search-api

✅

✅

For detailed pricing, see AI providers and models.

Use web search models​

Use bulk tools to perform web searches with any model that has web search capabilities (🌐).

  1. Open GPT for Sheets.

  2. In the sidebar, select Bulk AI tools and click the tool you want to use.

    Select Custom

  3. Expand the model switcher and select a web search model (indicated by the 🌐 icon).

    Select model

  4. (Optional) Configure the model-specific settings in the sidebar. For Gemini models, make sure web search is enabled.

  5. Set up your bulk tool run. For example, to set up a Custom prompt run:

    Setup Custom
    FieldDescriptionExample

    1

    Prompt to run for each row

    Enter the prompt you want to run for each row.

    Find and summarize reviews for: {{Event}}.

    3

    Put results in column

    Select the column to put the results in. Cells in these columns won't be overwritten with the results if they contain text.

    B: Information

    4

    Show sources

    		Enable this option to write source references in the column to the right of the results column.

    Enabled

  6. Click Run rows.

Your search results appear in the output column. If you enabled source references, they appear in the adjacent column.

Run Custom

For instructions on how to use the tools, see Bulk AI tools.

Model-specific settings​

Use the model-specific settings to configure the web search model for your use case.

SettingDescriptionExample

Web search

Let Gemini decide when a Google search can improve the answer. This allows Gemini to provide more accurate answers and cite verifiable sources beyond its built-in knowledge. Enabling Web search incurs an additional search cost.

Configure Google Gemini web search option

URL context

(Gemini 2.5 only)

Provide up to 20 URLs (pages, images, PDFs) to focus your search. No search cost is incurred, but the content retrieved from URLs counts as input tokens.

Configure Google Gemini URL context option
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