When using the Exa API, you can request different types of content to be returned for each search result.
Text (text=True)
Returns the full text content of the result, formatted as markdown. It extracts the main content (like article body text) while filtering out navigation elements, pop-ups, and other peripheral text. This is extractive content taken directly from the page’s source.Summary (summary=True)
Provides a concise summary generated from the text, tailored to a specific query you provide. This is abstractive content created by processing the source text using Gemini Flash.Structured Summaries
You can also request structured summaries by providing a JSON schema:Highlights
Delivers key excerpts from the text that are most relevant to your search query, emphasizing important information within the content. This is also extractive content from the source. You can configure highlights in two ways:-
Simple boolean (
highlights=True
): Returns default highlights based on the search query -
Detailed configuration (pass as an object):
query
: The specific query to use for generating highlights (if different from search query)numSentences
: Number of sentences per highlight (minimum: 1)highlightsPerUrl
: Maximum number of highlights to return per URL (minimum: 1)
Images and favicons
You can get images from webpages by settingimageLinks
(under contents.extras.imageLinks
) to specify how many images you want per result. Each result also includes the website’s favicon
URL and a representative image
URL when available.
Crawl Errors
The contents endpoint provides detailed status information for each URL through thestatuses
field in the response. The endpoint only returns an error if there’s an internal issue on Exa’s end - all other cases are reported through individual URL statuses.
Each response includes a statuses
array with status information for each requested URL:
CRAWL_NOT_FOUND
: Content not found (HTTP 404)CRAWL_TIMEOUT
: The target page returned a timeout error (HTTP 408)CRAWL_LIVECRAWL_TIMEOUT
: ThelivecrawlTimeout
parameter limit was reached during crawlingSOURCE_NOT_AVAILABLE
: Access forbidden or source unavailable (HTTP 403)CRAWL_UNKNOWN_ERROR
: Other errors (HTTP 500+)
statuses
field for each URL: