Count Search Intents not Result Pages

allklier

New to Kagi, evaluating it as many ex-Neeva users.

I'm a proponent of 'pay-per-use' pricing, and don't mind being billed per search.

But I find the way searches are counted non-intuitive. Example - search for term A, then click through 'images', 'videos', etc. and each counts as a separate search. Yes, it represents separate effort on the backend and sub-result pages, and thus cost.

But I could also argue:

The UI right now makes it more difficult to default to a Video search. If either use the Browser URL search, or the Kagi homepage, or even just the search bar at the top of the results page and hit enter, I land on the general results page, and then have to click over to video. I do a lot of video searches in my line of work, and that means every search is double counted, as I get the main results, and then have to click over to video.
If you count the main results as one query, it better be good and not force me to switch to news or others, or it don't double count.

I would find it more user friendly if you counted search intents instead of result pages. Figure out what the average set of back end pages per intent is, and change the price of a search, but don't double and tripple count. I was just testing various of the search features, and clicking through the different tabs of a single search intent cost me 6 searches in the billing!!

Better use case - same exact entry in the search box in the same browser session within the same 30s period should only count as 1 search, not many.

Vlad

allklier Extending a warm welcome to you!

search for term A, then click through 'images', 'videos', etc. and each counts as a separate search. Yes, it represents separate effort on the backend and sub-result pages, and thus cost.

Correct, these are all different searches and all have a cost. In fact our videos/images/news search is so deep that it costs on average 50% more than a web search. We chose to absorb the extra cost and price it the same as these are not used often and we want to reassure our users that hey will always find what they need.

The UI right now makes it more difficult to default to a Video search.

Make note of bangs. If you preface your search with !v you will land directly in videos (same as !i for images !n for news and !m for maps).

See https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/bangs.html

Another useful bang is !help which will search Kagi documentation (eg "!help bangs")

You can also create custom bangs to redirect you to other Kagi features such as Discuss documents or Universal Summarizer
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/ask-questions.html
https://kagi.com/summarizer

I would find it more user friendly if you counted search intents instead of result pages

The bearer of cost on our end is the result page so that is what we have to count.

Hopefully the above helps. I am very keen to understandihow we can reshape our UI or make these features easier to find/understand from your perspective as a fresh user.

Note that also we are heading towards the future where all plans will have unlimited searches. WE are not there yet economically but we will get there eventually.

allklier

Hi Vlad,

Thanks for the explanations. I didn't know yet about the bangs, that will indeed help. I'm used to them in terms of overriding search engine selection.

I will put together some additional thoughts on the UI in the coming week.

On the matter of what to count. I understand the cost driver being the query result page. Put yourself in the shoes of the paying customer. What matters to him is the answer he got, not how many result pages it took to get there. I'd rather pay you the number of answers I get, then the number result pages. It would also incentivize Kagi to optimize the number of query pages it takes to provide the answer, which is useful.

Example: if your usage stats indicate that people don't realize a !i gets them to image searches, and they end up clicking twice, in your current model you only have low to moderate incentive to do something about it. On the other hand if you charge by answer, you would be much more incentivized to make sure customers get their answers with fewer clicks/results pages and would likely figure out a way to improve the experience.

Financially it's quite simple. For arguments sake lets say in your stats you see that it takes 1.8 results pages on average per query intent. So you calibrate your plans on one token (paid search) covering the cost of 1.8 result pages. That way your cost is still covered the same way, but the accounting is more obvious to customers and the incentives are clearer for both.

Vlad

allklier Quite understandable, and we want to optimize for the user experience. This is why the bangs were created. If you have a better suggestion for UI, please let us know. As far as I know no search engine redirects to images/videos tabs automatically based on query (if I understood your original suggestion correctly).