mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

WebWalker: Benchmarking LLMs in Web Traversal

arXiv 2501.07572 ↗First posted 13 Jan 2025cs.CL cs.AIcited by 171

On the map: Retrieval-augmented generation → Agentic RAG, agents and memory

Abstract (arXiv)

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) demonstrates remarkable performance across tasks in open-domain question-answering. However, traditional search engines may retrieve shallow content, limiting the ability of LLMs to handle complex, multi-layered information. To address it, we introduce WebWalkerQA, a benchmark designed to assess the ability of LLMs to perform web traversal. It evaluates the capacity of LLMs to traverse a website's subpages to extract high-quality data systematically. We propose WebWalker, which is a multi-agent framework that mimics human-like web navigation through an explore-critic paradigm. Extensive experimental results show that WebWalkerQA is challenging and demonstrates the effectiveness of RAG combined with WebWalker, through the horizontal and vertical integration in real-world scenarios.

Key facts. Cited by 171 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Agentic RAG, agents and memory, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation. Builds on 44 of its 58 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 13 Jan 2025.

Builds on

44 of 58 references.

References · 44

  1. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,712
  2. 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,192
  3. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  4. 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,160
  5. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  6. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
  7. 2024Qwen2 Technical Reportcited by 2,076
  8. 2023WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agentscited by 1,908
  9. 2021WebGPT: Browser-assisted question-answering with human feedbackcited by 1,722
  10. 2023AgentBench: Evaluating LLMs as Agentscited by 1,211
  11. 2023Mind2Web: Towards a Generalist Agent for the Webcited by 1,210
  12. 2022WebShop: Towards Scalable Real-World Web Interaction with Grounded Language Agentscited by 1,197
32 more
  1. 2023GAIA: a benchmark for General AI Assistantscited by 1,084
  2. 2023CogAgent: A Visual Language Model for GUI Agentscited by 692
  3. 2024SeeClick: Harnessing GUI Grounding for Advanced Visual GUI Agentscited by 553
  4. 2024GPT-4V(ision) is a Generalist Web Agent, if Groundedcited by 547
  5. 2024WebVoyager: Building an End-to-End Web Agent with Large Multimodal Modelscited by 424
  6. 2023Language Models can Solve Computer Taskscited by 371
  7. 2023AgentTuning: Enabling Generalized Agent Abilities for LLMscited by 319
  8. 2018Reinforcement Learning on Web Interfaces Using Workflow-Guided Explorationcited by 282
  9. 2024Large Language Model-Brained GUI Agents: A Surveycited by 160
  10. 2023Multimodal Web Navigation with Instruction-Finetuned Foundation Modelscited by 159
  11. 2024AssistantBench: Can Web Agents Solve Realistic and Time-Consuming Tasks?cited by 155
  12. 2024Tree Search for Language Model Agentscited by 148
  13. 2024AutoWebGLM: A Large Language Model-based Web Navigating Agentcited by 130
  14. 2023Agents: An Open-source Framework for Autonomous Language Agentscited by 116
  15. 2024Symbolic Learning Enables Self-Evolving Agentscited by 104
  16. 2024GUI Agents: A Surveycited by 101
  17. 2023WebGLM: Towards An Efficient Web-Enhanced Question Answering System with Human Preferencescited by 100
  18. 2024Agent-FLAN: Designing Data and Methods of Effective Agent Tuning for Large Language Modelscited by 97
  19. 2024Agent-Pro: Learning to Evolve via Policy-Level Reflection and Optimizationcited by 93
  20. 2022A data-driven approach for learning to control computerscited by 87
  21. 2024AutoAct: Automatic Agent Learning from Scratch for QA via Self-Planningcited by 81
  22. 2024Agent-E: From Autonomous Web Navigation to Foundational Design Principles in Agentic Systemscited by 79
  23. 2024Beyond Browsing: API-Based Web Agentscited by 77
  24. 2024MindSearch: Mimicking Human Minds Elicits Deep AI Searchercited by 65
  25. 2024Inference Scaling for Long-Context Retrieval Augmented Generationcited by 65
  26. 2024MMInA: Benchmarking Multihop Multimodal Internet Agentscited by 55
  27. 2024OpenWebVoyager: Building Multimodal Web Agents via Iterative Real-World Exploration, Feedback and Optimizationcited by 45
  28. 2021Grounding Open-Domain Instructions to Automate Web Support Taskscited by 43
  29. 2024On the Multi-turn Instruction Following for Conversational Web Agentscited by 42
  30. 2024HtmlRAG: HTML is Better Than Plain Text for Modeling Retrieved Knowledge in RAG Systemscited by 37
  31. 2024Infogent: An Agent-Based Framework for Web Information Aggregationcited by 19
  32. 2024Tur[k]ingBench: A Challenge Benchmark for Web Agentscited by 18

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 82; 2026: 89.

171 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2025WebThinker: Empowering Large Reasoning Models with Deep Research Capabilitycited by 320
  2. 2025DeepResearch Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Deep Research Agentscited by 236
  3. 2025Agentic Reinforced Policy Optimizationcited by 166
  4. 2025A Survey of Self-Evolving Agents: What, When, How, and Where to Evolve on the Path to Artificial Super Intelligencecited by 155
  5. 2025Beyond Ten Turns: Unlocking Long-Horizon Agentic Search with Large-Scale Asynchronous RLcited by 144
  6. 2025ReSum: Unlocking Long-Horizon Search Intelligence via Context Summarizationcited by 132
  7. 2025Deep Research Agents: A Systematic Examination And Roadmapcited by 122
  8. 2025A Survey of Context Engineering for Large Language Modelscited by 120
  9. 2025Agent KB: Leveraging Cross-Domain Experience for Agentic Problem Solvingcited by 90
  10. 2025Memp: Exploring Agent Procedural Memorycited by 88
  11. 2025WebExplorer: Explore and Evolve for Training Long-Horizon Web Agentscited by 86
  12. 2025MemEvolve: Meta-Evolution of Agent Memory Systemscited by 81
38 more
  1. 2025Mind2Web 2: Evaluating Agentic Search with Agent-as-a-Judgecited by 75
  2. 2025Tree Search for LLM Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 73
  3. 2025MiroThinker: Pushing the Performance Boundaries of Open-Source Research Agents via Model, Context, and Interactive Scalingcited by 72
  4. 2025VRAG-RL: Empower Vision-Perception-Based RAG for Visually Rich Information Understanding via Iterative Reasoning with Reinforcement Learningcited by 68
  5. 2025A Survey on (M)LLM-Based GUI Agentscited by 61
  6. 2025WebSailor-V2: Bridging the Chasm to Proprietary Agents via Synthetic Data and Scalable Reinforcement Learningcited by 59
  7. 2025WebEvolver: Enhancing Web Agent Self-Improvement with Coevolving World Modelcited by 56
  8. 2025Training-Free Group Relative Policy Optimizationcited by 53
  9. 2025Tongyi DeepResearch Technical Reportcited by 53
  10. 2025Towards General Agentic Intelligence via Environment Scalingcited by 51
  11. 2026A Survey of Agentic Reasoning for Large Language Models: Towards Recursively Self-Improving and Collective Agentscited by 47
  12. 2025Harnessing Uncertainty: Entropy-Modulated Policy Gradients for Long-Horizon LLM Agentscited by 43
  13. 2025EvolveSearch: An Iterative Self-Evolving Search Agentcited by 42
  14. 2025Cognitive Kernel-Pro: A Framework for Deep Research Agents and Agent Foundation Models Trainingcited by 42
  15. 2025Towards Agentic RAG with Deep Reasoning: A Survey of RAG-Reasoning Systems in LLMscited by 40
  16. 2026Agent-World: Scaling Real-World Environment Synthesis for Evolving General Agent Intelligencecited by 35
  17. 2025ReportBench: Evaluating Deep Research Agents via Academic Survey Taskscited by 34
  18. 2026Vision-DeepResearch: Incentivizing DeepResearch Capability in Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 33
  19. 2025DeepScholar-Bench: A Live Benchmark and Automated Evaluation for Generative Research Synthesiscited by 31
  20. 2025WebChoreArena: Evaluating Web Browsing Agents on Realistic Tedious Web Taskscited by 29
  21. 2025MedBrowseComp: Benchmarking Medical Deep Research and Computer Usecited by 28
  22. 2026MiroThinker-1.7 & H1: Towards Heavy-Duty Research Agents via Verificationcited by 28
  23. 2025Flash-Searcher: Fast and Effective Web Agents via DAG-Based Parallel Executioncited by 27
  24. 2025FullFront: Benchmarking MLLMs Across the Full Front-End Engineering Workflowcited by 25
  25. 2026ExpSeek: Self-Triggered Experience Seeking for Web Agentscited by 23
  26. 2025A Comprehensive Survey on Reinforcement Learning-based Agentic Search: Foundations, Roles, Optimizations, Evaluations, and Applicationscited by 21
  27. 2025A Survey on Agentic Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 19
  28. 2026Inference-Time Scaling of Verification: Self-Evolving Deep Research Agents via Test-Time Rubric-Guided Verificationcited by 19
  29. 2025OmniThink: Expanding Knowledge Boundaries in Machine Writing through Thinkingcited by 18
  30. 2025WebLeaper: Empowering Efficiency and Efficacy in WebAgent via Enabling Info-Rich Seekingcited by 17
  31. 2025Multi-Agent Deep Research: Training Multi-Agent Systems with M-GRPOcited by 17
  32. 2026Temporary Authority, Permanent Effects: Commit-Time Authorization for LLM Agentscited by 17
  33. 2025BrowseMaster: Towards Scalable Web Browsing via Tool-Augmented Programmatic Agent Paircited by 16
  34. 2025WebMMU: A Benchmark for Multimodal Multilingual Website Understanding and Code Generationcited by 16
  35. 2025Multi-Agent Tool-Integrated Policy Optimizationcited by 16
  36. 2025GUI-Robust: A Comprehensive Dataset for Testing GUI Agent Robustness in Real-World Anomaliescited by 15
  37. 2025Draw with Thought: Unleashing Multimodal Reasoning for Scientific Diagram Generationcited by 14
  38. 2025WebCoT: Enhancing Web Agent Reasoning by Reconstructing Chain-of-Thought in Reflection, Branching, and Rollbackcited by 14

50 most cited of 171 All 171 (JSON)

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025InfoDeepSeek: Benchmarking Agentic Information Seeking for Retrieval-Augmented Generation
  2. 2026SGR-Bench: Benchmarking Search Agents on State-Gated Retrieval
  3. 2026Beyond Pipelines: A Fundamental Study on the Rise of Generative-Retrieval Architectures in Web Research
  4. 2025Learning to Route: A Rule-Driven Agent Framework for Hybrid-Source Retrieval-Augmented Generation
  5. 2025RAGCap-Bench: Benchmarking Capabilities of LLMs in Agentic Retrieval Augmented Generation Systems
  6. 2025WebLists: Extracting Structured Information From Complex Interactive Websites Using Executable LLM Agents
  7. 2025Frustratingly Simple Retrieval Improves Challenging, Reasoning-Intensive Benchmarks
  8. 2025DailyQA: A Benchmark to Evaluate Web Retrieval Augmented LLMs Based on Capturing Real-World Changes