Google Grounded Search + DuckDuckGo fallback pipeline fails to find primary-source URLs for real stories when grounding chunks lack the exact figure. Observed with AAA gas price data ($3.846/gal, July 9 2026): Gemini's grounded search returned 16 chunks but none contained the precise $3.846 figure, so quote-anchor attribution rejected all candidates (figure_ok=False). The DDG headline-search fallback also missed AAA's own press release. The story was correctly dropped (no unsourced citation), but this is a recurring editorial coverage gap — real, coverable stories are silently excluded because the fallback has weak recall for primary-source press releases.
Fix directions: (1) Add a second-chance DDG query using the story's key entity + figure verbatim (e.g. 'AAA gas prices $3.846') instead of just the headline — primary sources like AAA publish the exact figure in their press release title/body. (2) Try a site-specific fallback for known authoritative domains (gasprices.aaa.com, bls.gov, nar.realtor) when the story topic matches. (3) Relax figure_ok gating to accept candidates where the headline strongly matches (headline_score >= 3) even without the exact figure on the page, since the grounded text already contains the figure from Google's own index.