Your architecture models describe your organization — but the world outside your workspace keeps moving. Vendors get acquired, products reach end of support, standards get revised, and regulations change. AI Web Search brings live, current information from the public web directly into the Ardoq AI Assistant, so you can enrich and validate your architecture without leaving Ardoq or switching to a browser.
Ask the Assistant a question that Ardoq data alone can't answer, and it retrieves up-to-date information from the web, synthesizes an answer, and cites the sources it used — right inside your conversation.
Availability
AI Web Search is currently in Open Beta and can be enabled through an Org setting feature flag.
Web Search is switched off by default for every new AI Assistant session and must be turned on before the AI Assistant will search the web. If you don't see the option described below, it hasn't been enabled for your organization yet — contact your Ardoq administrator or your Ardoq Representative.
What does it do?
The AI Assistant is normally limited to your Ardoq data. AI Web Search extends it to current public knowledge — standards, vendor capabilities, and best practices — when your question requires information that isn't in Ardoq.
Typical things it's good at:
Vendor assessment — surface live vendor data, product updates, financial-health signals, and acquisition news, so you can validate vendor decisions against current market context instead of assumptions made months ago.
Technology strategy planning — pull in current technology trend data, competitive intelligence, and market signals to keep your future-state architecture aligned with where the market is actually heading.
Compliance and regulatory awareness — surface regulatory updates, compliance news, and governance requirements relevant to the technologies in your model.
Standards and vendor research in context — research standards, vendor capabilities, and best practices, and cross-reference your Ardoq data with current industry information — all within the same conversation.
Shallow by default, deep on request. Most questions are answered from a single quick search. If you need authoritative detail, just ask for it — "research this in depth" or "compare across multiple sources" — and the Assistant reads full pages instead of relying on snippets.
Who can use it?
AI Web Search is available to AI Assistant users in organizations where the feature has been enabled.
Like the rest of the AI Assistant, web search respects your existing permissions — it never exposes Ardoq data you wouldn't otherwise be able to see. Web search itself only ever queries public web content; it does not access authenticated, paywalled, or private pages.
How to access it
Open the AI Assistant from anywhere in Ardoq.
Turn on Web Search for your session using the toggle in the Assistant (you'll see a short disclaimer explaining that search queries are sent to a third-party search provider).
Ask your question. When the Assistant determines it needs information from outside Ardoq, it will search the web and return a cited answer.
💡 Tip: The toggle applies to your current session. Web search is off each time you start a new conversation, so you stay in control of when the Assistant reaches outside Ardoq.
If you ask a question that needs the web while web search is turned off, the Assistant will stop and prompt you to enable it and try again.
Seeing what the Assistant did
When the Assistant uses web search, it appears in the reasoning and execution trail of the conversation, including the search objective — so you can see that a search happened and what it was for. The answer itself lists its sources, and the Assistant will indicate when information came from the web rather than from your Ardoq data.
Combining web search with your architecture
Web search is most powerful when paired with your enterprise architecture. A common pattern:
The Assistant reads a value from your Ardoq data (for example, an application's Support end date field).
It searches the web for the authoritative current value.
It stages a suggested update to that field for your review.
As with all AI Assistant changes, staged updates are not applied automatically — you review and approve them before anything is written to your workspace.
Good practice & limitations
Ask one thing at a time. Web search works best one item at a time. Bulk requests — such as checking the end of extended support for a whole list of applications from a report in a single prompt — is not reliable today because accuracy drops when many items are searched at once. Ask about items individually for accurate results.
Public web only. It can't read authenticated, paywalled, or login-protected pages, and it can't run pages that only render with JavaScript. Some sites also block automated requests.
The web isn't always right. Answers are only as good as the sources found. Citations are provided precisely so you can verify — treat surprising results as a prompt to check the source, especially before acting on them.
It says when it doesn't know. If the search doesn't turn up good sources, the Assistant tells you rather than guessing.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Does AI Web Search change my data?
A: No — not on its own. Like the rest of the AI Assistant, any change it proposes is staged for your review and only written to your workspace after you approve it.
Q: Does my data leave Ardoq when I use web search?
A: Using web search means the Assistant sends a search query to a third-party search provider and may fetch public web pages. That's the disclaimer you accept when enabling it. Web search is off by default and opt-in per AI Assistant session so you decide when this happens. The web-search component runs in an isolated environment that has no access to your Ardoq workspace data — it can reach the public web, but not Ardoq's internal systems.
Q: Will the AI follow instructions hidden inside a web page?
A: No. The Assistant treats the content of web pages as information to read, not as instructions to act on, and ignores any text on a page that tries to redirect its behaviour.
Q: How do I turn it on or off?
A: Use the Web Search toggle in the AI Assistant. It's off by default, applies to your current session, and can be turned off again at any time. Availability of the toggle is controlled by your organisation's settings.
Q: Can I ask it to research something in depth?
A: Yes. By default it does a quick search; ask it to "research in depth" or "compare across sources" and it will read full pages and pull from multiple sources.
Q: Why doesn't the Assistant just search the web for everything?
A: Web search is reserved for questions that genuinely need outside information. For anything answerable from your Ardoq data — reports, components, viewpoints, the metamodel — the Assistant uses your data directly, which is faster and more accurate.