diff --git a/backend/open_webui/routers/retrieval.py b/backend/open_webui/routers/retrieval.py
index b7d70d7509..fb64e51947 100644
--- a/backend/open_webui/routers/retrieval.py
+++ b/backend/open_webui/routers/retrieval.py
@@ -2670,7 +2670,12 @@ async def process_web_search(request: Request, form_data: SearchForm, user=Depen
                     user=user,
                 )
             except Exception as e:
-                log.debug(f'error saving docs: {e}')
+                # Surface the failure instead of returning an unusable collection
+                log.exception(f'Error saving web search results to vector DB: {e}')
+                raise HTTPException(
+                    status.HTTP_500_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR,
+                    detail='Failed to embed and store the retrieved web pages. Check the embedding configuration in Admin Settings > Documents.',
+                )
 
             return {
                 'status': True,
diff --git a/backend/open_webui/utils/middleware.py b/backend/open_webui/utils/middleware.py
index 1fade157f8..be87d1c1ee 100644
--- a/backend/open_webui/utils/middleware.py
+++ b/backend/open_webui/utils/middleware.py
@@ -1497,12 +1497,13 @@ async def chat_web_search_handler(request: Request, form_data: dict, extra_param
 
     except Exception as e:
         log.exception(e)
+        detail = e.detail if isinstance(e, HTTPException) else None
         await event_emitter(
             {
                 'type': 'status',
                 'data': {
                     'action': 'web_search',
-                    'description': 'An error occurred while searching the web',
+                    'description': (str(detail) if detail else 'An error occurred while searching the web'),
                     'queries': queries,
                     'done': True,
                     'error': True,