Google vs Bing Search: Which to Use with OpenClaw

AgentPatch offers both Google Search and Bing Search as MCP tools. If you’re setting up web search for your OpenClaw bot, you might wonder which to use — or whether to use both. Here’s a practical breakdown.

Why This Matters

Google and Bing return different results for the same query. That’s true for human searchers and it’s true for agents too. Depending on what your OpenClaw bot needs to find, one engine may consistently outperform the other. For some use cases, having both available and letting the agent choose makes sense.

Both tools cost the same (50 credits per call) and have the same interface. The difference is purely in result quality for a given query type.

How They Compare

Google Search tends to produce better results for:

  • Technical documentation and developer-focused content
  • News and current events
  • Local business information
  • Anything where freshness and authority matter

Bing Search tends to produce better results for:

  • Product and shopping research
  • Some regional content, particularly outside the US
  • Queries where you want a different perspective from Google’s ranking

For a general-purpose OpenClaw bot, Google Search is the better default. If your bot has a specific focus — say, product research or e-commerce price checking — Bing is worth testing.

Setup

Add AgentPatch to ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json:

{
  "mcp": {
    "servers": {
      "agentpatch": {
        "transport": "streamable-http",
        "url": "https://agentpatch.ai/mcp",
        "headers": {
          "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Replace YOUR_API_KEY with your actual key from the AgentPatch dashboard. Restart OpenClaw and it discovers all AgentPatch tools automatically.

Example

Your OpenClaw bot handles both general questions and product research. A user asks:

“What’s the best mechanical keyboard under $100 right now?”

If the bot routes this to Google Search, it might pull review articles. With Bing, it’s more likely to surface current pricing and product listings. In practice, you can let OpenClaw decide which to use — or you can guide it in your system prompt by telling it to prefer Bing for shopping queries.

For a more typical query:

“What’s the latest on the Anthropic model releases?”

Google Search will almost always return fresher, more authoritative results for tech news than Bing.

If you want to keep it simple, start with just Google Search enabled. If you notice gaps in certain query types, add Bing and let the agent use both.

Wrapping Up

For most OpenClaw use cases, Google Search is the right starting point. Bing Search is a useful addition if your bot handles shopping or product research. Both are available through the same AgentPatch connection, alongside everything else on the marketplace. See agentpatch.ai for the full tool list.

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