This page introduces search with answer and follow-ups for Agent Search and shows you how to implement it for custom search apps using method calls.
Search with answer and follow-ups is based on the answer method. The answer method replaces the summarization features of the older search method and all of the features of the deprecated converse method. The answer method also has some important additional features, such as the ability to handle complex queries.
Features of the answer method
Key features of the answer method are as follows:
The ability to generate answers to complex queries. For example, the answer method can break down compound queries, such as the following, into multiple, smaller queries to return better results that are used to power better answers:
- "What is Google Cloud and Google Ads respective revenue in 2024?"
- "After how many years since its founding, did Google reach 1 billion USD revenue?"
The ability to combine search and answer generation in a multi-turn conversation by calling the answer method in each turn.
The ability to pair with the search method to reduce search latency. You can call the search method and the answer method separately and render the search results and answers in different iframes at different times. This means that you can show your users search results (the 10 blue links) within milliseconds. You don't need to wait for answers to be generated before you can show search results.
The features of answer and follow-ups can be divided into three phases of the query, search and answer: