Ideas for improving local/international/english search modalities

sj26

Vlad I don't think I ever selected Australia on Kagi. Does it pick something by default?

And, even if it is self-selected, doesn't that give you exactly what you need — that results (and all related information) should cater to that regional selection?

Vlad

sj26 I think it is not trivial.

You search for 'xyz widget' which is only avaialble in US home depot and nowhere else - do we not show it because you have AU region selected?

And in the case of op - how would we know where is sweetwater located and that it does not have stores in AU?

sj26

Sorry, I'm not familiar with your implementation, but I would imagine having region as a selector for search results means there is some sort of regional faceting available. How is that accomplished?

ccTLDs are a useful signal, but not for US results. In this case, Sweetwater === https://www.sweetwater.com, and that has a US address in the footer on the first page.

To show accurate regional search results I would imagine these and other signals are being used within the index, and could be repurposed for these sorts of purchase links, too.

But it does become non-trivial when considering international shipping etc. Maybe it's not a (pragmatically) solveable problem to hide those links.

What about prioritising regional results, though? For example, here's another set of search results for me for this mic:

The amazon.com.au, storedj.com.au, and djcity.com.au links would be perfect as regional results over in the purchase links.

tychoregter

I think the title is already pretty self-explanatory. But I’ll try to explain my suggestion a bit more in detail.

Essentially, I would like to have results for two (or more) regions shown whenever I make a search. I often find myself preferring international results over my local results and vise-versa.

I personally think mixed results from multiple selected regions would greatly improve this experience and my search experience in general.

Vlad

tychoregter It would also double the cost per search (for one extra region, or triple it if two extra regions). So doable but would you pay for it?

tychoregter

Vlad I would love to answer that with a yes. But in reality it will probably get pretty expensive real quick, which would most likely result into me turning a feature like that off within a couple of weeks.

I will try to come up with an alternative.

andsens

Aw man, I didn't think of that! Had almost the same idea.
I would love an "EU" region with a "Shopping" lens when e.g. searching for new PC parts.
However, I can see how that would completely blow the budget with 27 individual searches that would need to be combined. I leave this here for posterity if anyone ever comes up with a cost-effective alternative.

Vlad

Hey people, I merged a few similar threads here and want to come back to this.

Re-reading this thread I see two conflicting schools of thought that can be roughly summarized as

If I am in [xx] region show me only results from that region
If I am in [xx] region, show me a good mix of international/english results

Kagi currently leans more towards 1.

What is some of the low hanging fruit we can quickly implement to make the situation better for everyone?

If you can afford, please re-read the entire thread before sharing your opinion because they are different, often conflicting use cases provided.

kristofferR

Vlad If I am in [xx] region show me only results from that region
If I am in [xx] region, show me a good mix of international/english results

Kagi currently leans more towards 1.

What is some of the low hanging fruit we can quickly implement to make the situation better for everyone?

I'd argue that Kagi currently leans more towards 2, and that's good.

I don't get why you don't just copy Google. Let users who want it select "Only from" Region/Language for a search in the search settings:

That way people only wanting content from their selected language/region could easily set that, and the rest of us can get good results, with a natural mix of region language and English depending on our search term, without all the extra labor and headaches of having to redo half our searches solely because we did a search with the opposite region set previously (as it's obviously impossible to see what Region you have selected when you search from the browser address bar).

When I type an English search term I want English results, when I type a Norwegian term I want Norwegian results, and if I type a mixed/unspecified term I want a good mix of both if they exist (in Norwegian), otherwise just English results ofc. Without having to manually change regions all the damn time. That's how it currently works, please don't change that! [1]

However, I should be able to force the search to only display crappy local results, like on Google.

One improvement over Google would be making the settings mentioned above "sticky" (like Lenses) so they don't reset for every search. Another obvious improvement over Google would be to show all languages/regions, like the current region selector, instead of the stupid way Google does it with only showing All and the Language/region of the Google ccTLD you are on.

[1] This is a great example of the perfect mix that is currently there (open in new tab):

MattLisson

Vlad

I agree that there are two conflicting schools of thought, but I would say that the results based on language and results based on region shouldn't necessarily be tied together.

As you say, international communication tends to default to english, but someone's language isn't necessarily tied to their region in many cases, so the best possible solution would be to ensure the backend treats language and region separately and then allows choosing different settings in the UI (Although probably too big an effort right now).

For my original query about shopping queries, its really a special case where I flip back and forth between the two schools of thought you post. I search for reviews world-wide for products that are international (Tech, Websites, etc), but only locally for local services and products (vegemite, mobile phone plans, etc). I'm not suggesting biasing the search engine one way or the other, but letting us choose.

Three suggestions for how we could choose this in the UI:

In the existing region drop down box, add an "Exclusively" button to the far right side, to allow selecting a region and excluding all other region's results.
- This requires the backend knowing that .com.au sites are local to Australia, .co.uk to UK, and so on.
- There are other cases where .com sites are hosted in Australia and have Australian local content, but skipping those is fine by me to keep it simple.
Using the multi-region UI mocked up by Teriy-Aki, display "International" as enabled by default (since international results are included by default), then selecting "International" will remove it from the selected regions and perform the same as option 1.
A separate toggle (possibly hidden in an overflow menu) that just says "Exclude international results".
- Again, toggling this on would perform as option 1.

In an ideal world, these same selections would be available separately based on languages, and the default settings for a search would be inferred from the language of the search terms. But I'll leave others to pitch that change.

Teriy-Aki

I'm from Germany, and when I want both English and German results, I often encounter the issue:

if I select Germany: I only or primarily get German results and very limited English discussions. Even if the search term is in English...
if I select International: It will often show me results from many regions, many neither in an English-speaking country NOR Germany
if I select USA/UK: I only get English results, no German ones: I also get pages that I don't even want to see or are completely irrelevant.

This is especially annoying when I search for things like PC parts because I want data from a wide variety of English-speaking sources but still remain in the region of Germany. Otherwise, I often get stuff from sites like Best Buy or Newegg - stores I cannot even buy from as a German.

My suggestions

allow you to specify multiple regions (for example: by selecting US/UK + Germany, you get results in English + German) + Then also allow you to prioritize a region over another if you want to.
allow you to choose international or whatever region you desire but only show you results in languages you actually speak

Since the first option likely means having to do two searches at once (doubling the search cost), I think option 2 would be a great alternative. You could just choose International and select English and German as your languages. You could have this in settings so that no matter which region you search with, it will only pull from sites that speak a language you actually speak. That would be extremely helpful.

Vlad

Teriy-Aki Can you expand on how would the interface for this look like?

Teriy-Aki

Vlad Hello Vlad, since I am no UI designer, I am unsure about the best way to do it. But I think the most productive way to do it would be to use and add to the existing interface. I tried my best to visualize it.

I would add a section under the category "search" in settings called "language and region preferences" or similar and add two options.

use regions:
entering a region here makes kagi automatically return results from each selected region (ofc with a disclaimer that this will increase search cost)
filter languages:
entering a language into this roster makes kagi remember only to display results in these languages

Alternatively (or additionally), you could utilize the preexisting UI in the search options. Since Kagi already moves the currently selected regions to the top, kagi could simply allow you to select multiple regions move at once, move all of them to the top and remember the languages you frequently use for quick and easy selections. as in this example.

A second drop-down menu next to regions could fulfill the language filtering. Fitting it into the current design, I imagine that it could look like this:

I personally prefer the first approach (via the settings), because it means I don't always have to reselect my region/languages every time and its a lot cleaner. But both options could be very useful to users.

Vlad

Teriy-Aki Thanks for taking time and effort to create a mockup.

Searge

Teriy-Aki filtering the results by language is extremely necessary here in Ukraine!

No search engine has yet been able to handle the straightforward task of not showing search results for Ukraine in russian. I would be happy to buy a subscription. If there was such an option and it worked.

macro

There's one frustration I have with Kagi that I had not with Google : I often do my searches online in 2 languages

80% of my searches are international, so in English
20% of my searches are about local businessses or french services and websites

However, when I type or search a service or business typically french, results are irrelevant because my default search is international. When I switch over France, then it's OK.

However I did not have to do that switch manually on Google, it detected automatically my scope of search. Right now, I use bangs. But after many months I still don't have the reflex to add my bang each time I search for something french.

Note, this thread could be a nice workaround I guess : https://kagifeedback.org/d/1671-multiple-regions-and-filter-by-language

Is there a way to implement such feature ?

Vlad

macro What does the minimum viable implementation for you looks like?

macro

Vlad I never had the opportunity to answeer back. I like how other people answered with a multiple-language selection, but I don't know complicated it could be under the hood. I guess a quick algorithm that would detect the language of my query before sending it to kagi would work to, and would automatically "tag" my query with whatever language it detected.

But it could go way more than that. I often read old blogs in others languages, and, on a foreing website, chrome or safari offers the option to automatically translate the page. A breakthrough in search engine would be an option of "power query"or so, to understand my request, expand it with synonyms as an option, translate it with other languages, and return to me all the most relevant results, whatever the source language would be.

As for "local" searches such as restaurants ans such, I'm still frustrated that, if I want to quickly search the opening hours or the phone number of a restaurant let say, I have to use google. I move towards simplifying this and make kagi a bit smarter would be great.

Peter

Searge

I agree with Searge, filtering results by language would improve my usage of Kagi a lot.