Grounding metadata is the structured payload returned by LLMs that exposes search queries, browsed sources, and segment-level source attributions, parsed from Google Gemini response structures and OpenAI web search actions.

flowchart TD
    Resp[LLM Grounded API Response] --> Meta[Grounding Metadata]
    Meta --> Queries[webSearchQueries]
    Meta --> Chunks[groundingChunks]
    Meta --> Supports[groundingSupports]

    Queries --> QDesc[Search queries executed]
    Chunks --> CDesc[Web sources and URLs browsed]
    Supports --> SDesc[In-text span attributions]