Deep Research

What is Deep Research?

Deep Research is an agentic research mode in AI assistants that investigates a question on its own and delivers a detailed report with cited sources. Instead of answering in seconds, it plans an approach, runs many searches over several minutes, reads the pages it finds and writes up what it learned with links to its sources.

ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and other assistants offer versions of this mode, often under the same name. The user gives a broad task, such as "compare the main payroll providers for Dutch SMEs on price, features and support", and the assistant works through it like a junior analyst: it breaks the task into subquestions, then searches, reads, refines and summarizes.

Deep Research is a clear example of AI agents at work. Like query fan-out, it splits a question into parts, but it goes further: it searches step by step and decides what to look up next based on what it has already read.

Why Deep Research matters for your brand

Deep Research is built for the kind of questions brands care about most: vendor comparisons, market scans and purchase research. A single report can read and cite dozens of sources, and readers may treat the result as a finished shortlist. If your brand is missing from the sources it reads, you are missing from the conclusion.

Because these reports cite their sources, AI citations carry extra weight here. Pages with specific, verifiable information, such as pricing details, specifications, documentation, case studies and independent reviews, give the model something concrete to quote. Thin marketing pages give it little to work with.

How to show up in Deep Research reports

• Publish detailed, factual pages on the questions buyers research: pricing, features, integrations, security and comparisons.

• Add dates, figures and sources to your pages so claims are easy to verify and cite.

• Make sure AI crawlers can read your content as plain HTML, without logins or heavy scripts.

• Be present on the third-party sources research reports draw on, such as review platforms, industry publications and comparison articles.

• Run your own Deep Research tasks for your category every quarter and note which sources and competitors appear.

Deep Research reports are hard to monitor at scale, because each one is long and unique. A practical proxy is to track which sources AI models cite in regular answers to the same questions, and to strengthen your presence there. Our guide on how to get cited by AI explains how to earn mentions on the sources models trust.

Examples of Deep Research

• An operations manager asks for a report on route planning software for a Dutch delivery company with 30 vans. The assistant reads vendor sites, reviews and forum threads and cites them in a comparison.

• A founder researches the European market for plant-based protein snacks and gets a report citing trade media, retailer pages and a statistics page from an industry association.

• An agency uses Deep Research to prepare a pitch and finds that the prospect's main competitor is cited through a detailed pricing page the prospect lacks.

• A B2B software buyer asks for the most secure file-sharing tools for law firms, and the report relies heavily on vendors' published security documentation.