Google's Deep Research: The Research Assistant Writers Have Been Waiting For

Say Goodbye to 47 Open Tabs

I had initially planned on doing a couple of articles on Perplexity AI. While researching, I came across Google’s newly released Deep Research feature. Given the significant buzz and praise it’s receiving, I decided to explore it first.

Deep Research provides a glimpse into a new era of “agentic” AI, where AI systems actively perform tasks on our behalf rather than simply responding to prompts.

Think about planning a vacation. Currently, you would:

• Research multiple sites to create an itinerary

• Open multiple tabs for flights and hotels

• Compare prices across different websites

• Read dozens of reviews

• Make bookings

The whole process can take days or even weeks.

Now, imagine a system that could understand your preferences and constraints, and:

• Search across multiple sites to create the best itinerary

• Check flight and hotel prices across different platforms

• Analyze reviews from various sources

• Present you with the best options and you complete the bookings

This is the fundamental shift that agentic AI brings — from passive tools that wait for commands to active assistants that understand goals and work independently to achieve them.

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Understanding Agentic Search

The typical research process for writing looks like this:

• Type a query into Google

• Open 47 links in new tabs

• Fight through ads and popups to find content

• Spend hours synthesizing information

• Give up

Take a look at the modern web experience:

A reading experience so pathetic it could cause a pain in your brain.

What if we could have an agent that could understand what we’re trying to research, browse the internet for information, and present the findings in a clean, distraction-free format:

This is what Deep Research helps us do. With Deep Research, you can ask Google’s Gemini 1.5 LLM scour the web on your behalf and write up a report based on the findings.

Source: Google

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How Deep Research Works

Deep Research is a paid feature. To access, you’d need a Google One AI Premium Plan ($20 a month). Currently, there’s a free one-month trial you can use to explore.

1. Once you log into Gemini, you’re presented with the chat screen. Select “1.5 Pro with Deep Research” from the model dropdown.

   

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2. Type in the thing you’d want to research:

   

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3. After this, Deep Research will break down the task and create a multi-step research plan to accomplish the goal:

   

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4. You can edit the plan if you want.

   For example, I also want to see what people are saying about Deep Research on social media websites and communities.

   To include this in the plan, I click on ‘Edit plan’, and tell that to the agent:

   

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5. Deep Research creates a revised plan for you. If you’re satisified with the plan, click ‘Start Research’

   

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6. Once approved, it begins searching the web for interesting pieces of information.

   Based on what it finds, it performs new, related searches — much like how you naturally follow research threads.

   This process repeats multiple times until it has gathered comprehensive information.

   

   Check out how it also included Reddit threads because I asked it to search communities where users spoke about Deep Research:

   

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7. Once it has gone through the websites, it would compile the report. The whole process could take a few minutes, depending on the number of websites.

   The report also has links to the sources of information.

   Click on the dropdown symbol to see the sources:

   

   Let’s see what the users have been saying:

   

   So, in a single section I can guage what the users have been saying about this tool. To verify, I can go to the thread and read the whole conversation. Powerful. Saves a lot of time.

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8. The whole report can also be exported to Google Docs by clicking on ‘Open in Docs’ at the top of the research report:

   

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9. You can also ask follow-up questions if you need further details:

   

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When to Use Deep Research (And When Not To)

Use Deep Research when you’re:

• Starting research on a new topic

• Need a broad overview quickly

• Looking for patterns across multiple sources

But it might not be your best friend when:

• Require very recent information (it has a slight delay in crawling new content)

• Need access to paywalled content

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As with any emerging technology, Deep Research is not without its limitations.

However, given Google’s massive web index and advanced AI capabilities, the future versions are only going to be more potent.

It frees us from the mindless parts of research so we can focus on what matters: analysis, insight, and creation.

Sure, you might miss those “This site uses cookies” banners, but the trade-off seems worth it.

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