# SealQA: Raising the Bar for Reasoning in Search-Augmented Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.01062 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01062/

## Key facts

- Cited by 75 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 41 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Jun 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/knowledge-and-tool-augmented-reasoning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Qwen3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09388/) (2025)
- [Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03300/) (2020)
- [Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03874/) (2021)
- [Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03172/) (2023)
- [SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06770/) (2023)
- [GPQA: A Graduate-Level Google-Proof Q&A Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12022/) (2023)
- [Scaling LLM Test-Time Compute Optimally can be More Effective than Scaling Model Parameters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03314/) (2024)
- [Search-R1: Training LLMs to Reason and Leverage Search Engines with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09516/) (2025)
- [s1: Simple test-time scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.19393/) (2025)
- [Measuring and Narrowing the Compositionality Gap in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03350/) (2022)
- [Large Language Monkeys: Scaling Inference Compute with Repeated Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21787/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models Can Be Easily Distracted by Irrelevant Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00093/) (2023)
- [BrowseComp: A Simple Yet Challenging Benchmark for Browsing Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12516/) (2025)
- [Scaling up Test-Time Compute with Latent Reasoning: A Recurrent Depth Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05171/) (2025)
- [Measuring short-form factuality in large language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04368/) (2024)
- [Adaptive Chameleon or Stubborn Sloth: Revealing the Behavior of Large Language Models in Knowledge Conflicts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13300/) (2023)
- [FreshLLMs: Refreshing Large Language Models with Search Engine Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03214/) (2023)
- [tinyBenchmarks: evaluating LLMs with fewer examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14992/) (2024)
- [Knowledge Conflicts for LLMs: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08319/) (2024)
- [RealTime QA: What's the Answer Right Now?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.13332/) (2022)
- [Fact, Fetch, and Reason: A Unified Evaluation of Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12941/) (2024)
- [A Dataset for Answering Time-Sensitive Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06314/) (2021)
- [SituatedQA: Incorporating Extra-Linguistic Contexts into QA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.06157/) (2021)
- [Rich Knowledge Sources Bring Complex Knowledge Conflicts: Recalibrating Models to Reflect Conflicting Evidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13701/) (2022)
- [StreamingQA: A Benchmark for Adaptation to New Knowledge over Time in Question Answering Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11388/) (2022)
- [Tug-of-War Between Knowledge: Exploring and Resolving Knowledge Conflicts in Retrieval-Augmented Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14409/) (2024)
- [FaithEval: Can Your Language Model Stay Faithful to Context, Even If "The Moon is Made of Marshmallows"](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03727/) (2024)
- [What Evidence Do Language Models Find Convincing?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11782/) (2024)
- [ConflictBank: A Benchmark for Evaluating the Influence of Knowledge Conflicts in LLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12076/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 75)

- [Kimi K2.5: Visual Agentic Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02276/) (2026)
- [EvoSkill: Automated Skill Discovery for Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02766/) (2026)
- [MiroThinker: Pushing the Performance Boundaries of Open-Source Research Agents via Model, Context, and Interactive Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.11793/) (2025)
- [A Survey of LLM-based Deep Search Agents: Paradigm, Optimization, Evaluation, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05668/) (2025)
- [DeepDive: Advancing Deep Search Agents with Knowledge Graphs and Multi-Turn RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.10446/) (2025)
- [Scaling Agents via Continual Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13310/) (2025)
- [MiroThinker-1.7 & H1: Towards Heavy-Duty Research Agents via Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15726/) (2026)
- [IterResearch: Rethinking Long-Horizon Agents with Interaction Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07327/) (2025)
- [ExpSeek: Self-Triggered Experience Seeking for Web Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.08605/) (2026)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on Reinforcement Learning-based Agentic Search: Foundations, Roles, Optimizations, Evaluations, and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.16724/) (2025)
- [From Raw Experience to Skill Consumption: A Systematic Study of Model-Generated Agent Skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.23899/) (2026)
- [Scaling the Horizon, Not the Parameters: Reaching Trillion-Parameter Performance with a 35B Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30616/) (2026)
- [MetaSkill-Evolve: Recursive Self-Improvement of LLM Agents via Two-Timescale Meta-Skill Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.05297/) (2026)
- [WebLeaper: Empowering Efficiency and Efficacy in WebAgent via Enabling Info-Rich Seeking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.24697/) (2025)
- [CausalFlow: Causal Attribution and Counterfactual Repair for LLM Agent Failures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25338/) (2026)
- [APEX-MEM: Agentic Semi-Structured Memory with Temporal Reasoning for Long-Term Conversational AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14362/) (2026)
- [Toward Efficient Agents: Memory, Tool learning, and Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14192/) (2026)
- [DeepSieve: Information Sieving via LLM-as-a-Knowledge-Router](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22050/) (2025)
- [WikiSkill: Compiling Agent Experience into Persistent Knowledge for Skill Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.27454/) (2026)
- [Are Tools All We Need? Unveiling the Tool-Use Tax in LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.00136/) (2026)
- [LiteResearcher: A Scalable Agentic RL Training Framework for Deep Research Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17931/) (2026)
- [Harness-1: Reinforcement Learning for Search Agents with State-Externalizing Harnesses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02373/) (2026)
- [LocalSearchBench: Benchmarking Agentic Search in Real-World Local Life Services](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07436/) (2025)
- [EcomBench: Towards Holistic Evaluation of Foundation Agents in E-commerce](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.08868/) (2025)
- [Lost in the Noise: How Reasoning Models Fail with Contextual Distractors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.07226/) (2026)
- [DualSpec: Accelerating Deep Research Agents via Dual-Process Action Speculation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07416/) (2026)
- [Evidence-Augmented Policy Optimization with Reward Co-Evolution for Long-Context Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10306/) (2026)
- [Reading, Not Thinking: Understanding and Bridging the Modality Gap When Text Becomes Pixels in Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.09095/) (2026)
- [FORT-Searcher: Synthesizing Shortcut-Resistant Search Tasks for Training Deep Search Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.12087/) (2026)
- [GISA: A Benchmark for General Information-Seeking Assistant](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.08543/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce SealQA, a new challenge benchmark for evaluating SEarch-Augmented Language models on fact-seeking questions where web search yields conflicting, noisy, or unhelpful results. SealQA comes in three flavors: (1) Seal-0 (main) and (2) Seal-Hard, which assess factual accuracy and reasoning capabilities, with Seal-0 focusing on the most challenging questions where chat models (e.g., GPT-4.1) typically achieve near-zero accuracy; and (3) LongSeal, which extends SealQA to test long-context, multi-document reasoning in "needle-in-a-haystack" settings. Our evaluation reveals critical limitations in current models: Even frontier LLMs perform poorly across all SealQA flavors. On Seal-0, frontier agentic models equipped with tools like o3 and o4-mini achieve only 17.1% and 6.3% accuracy, respectively, at their best reasoning efforts. We find that advanced reasoning models such as DeepSeek-R1-671B and o3-mini are highly vulnerable to noisy search results. Notably, increasing test-time compute does not yield reliable gains across o3-mini, o4-mini, and o3, with performance often plateauing or even declining early. Additionally, while recent models are less affected by the "lost-in-the-middle" issue, they still fail to reliably identify relevant documents in LongSeal when faced with numerous distractors. To facilitate future work, we release SealQA at huggingface.co/datasets/vtllms/sealqa.