2026-05-28 — Web Search MCP Test Review
Test Overview
Use web search via the MCP server in Qwen Code to assist development, such as researching CI/CD tools, searching API endpoints, etc.
MCP Server Configuration
| MCP Server | Engine | Role |
|---|---|---|
| community-web-search | DuckDuckGo + Reddit | No API key, caching/blacklist based |
| GitHub MCP | GitHub API | Repository/code/PR search |
| Brave Search | Brave API | Web search |
Test Results
| MCP Server | Engine | Status | Issue |
|---|---|---|---|
| community-web-search | DuckDuckGo | ✅ Normal | — |
| community-web-search | ⚠️ Unstable | 503 response, sometimes 0 results | |
| GitHub MCP | search_repositories | ❌ Failure | Authentication error (Authentication Failed) |
| GitHub MCP | search_code | ❌ Failure | Authentication error (Authentication Failed) |
| Brave Search | brave_web_search | ❌ Failure | SUBSCRIPTION_TOKEN_INVALID |
| Brave Search | brave_local_search | ❌ Failure | Token expired |
| community-web-search | scrape_url | ⚠️ Occasionally | Playwright Chromium loading slow |
Key Findings
- DuckDuckGo is the most stable — 10 results parsed from the uddg URL, taking ~2‑3 seconds.
- Reddit search is unstable — JSON API frequently returns 503, possibly due to User-Agent header issues.
- GitHub MCP token not set —
GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKENenv variable is missing, causing all search APIs to fail. - Brave Search token expired — API subscription token is invalid.
- scrape_url — Playwright stealth mode works but is slow (~10 seconds or more).
Improvement Tasks
- Reset GitHub MCP token: add
GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKENto~/.qwen/settings.json. - Improve Reddit engine: add retry logic, fix User-Agent, handle fallback.
- Replace Brave Search token: need to issue a new API subscription token.
- scrape_url caching: cache repeated fetches of the same URL to improve response time.
- Enhance error logging: log MCP server stdout/stderr for easier debugging.
- Optimize timeouts: 60‑second timeout is too long — consider per‑engine timeout settings.
Conclusion
Currently, the community-web-search MCP can only be used in practice with the DuckDuckGo engine. GitHub MCP and Brave Search require token resets. The Reddit engine urgently needs retry and logging improvements.