Ideas for improving local/international/english search modalities

Vapid

I want to add that I don't want the region selection to filter out international results. I appreciate that it adds in additional results specific to your region, but it would be infuriating to use if it filtered out all other results.

Currently I leave my region filter on "Sweden" all the time, and never switch it to international. Most of my searches are in English and I expect non-Sweden specific results to be included. I don't want to have to toggle between these all the time depending on if I'm making an "international" or Sweden specific search as I switch context regularly.

MattLisson

Really I would like a toggle I can use to exclude international results, but only occasionally.

This issue happens with other product related queries too: "PS5 On Sale" or "Best Cat Food" for example.
I agree that many queries international results are desirable. But for searches like these I really am looking for exclusively local results. I am unable to purchase PS5s from most international stores, and brands of cat food differ significantly in Australia vs the US or UK. With Google I used to flip back and forth between including and excluding international results to gather the data I'm looking for.

Adding "Australia" to those queries slightly improves the number of local results, but still about half of the results are US or UK specific, and are irrelevant to what I'm looking for.

Thank you.

gaki

I have UK region selected but continuously need to append/prepend “uk” to queries to stop US results coming back. It’s pretty much the only thing that irks me about the service.

For example, searching for “price of first class stamp” shows me the US price, but this is a classic example of when I would expect local results to take priority. Otherwise what is the point of a region selection?

Vlad

gaki Can you share a screenshot? I get what I think is a UK based result as a first hit.

Buffalo_Tree

Vlad Here's an example of this in New Zealand. Quick answer is for the USA, second link is in the UK, and third link is for the NZ Post.

Edit: I suppose there are no first class stamps in NZ but I would expect the local postage results to take precedence.

sj26

Love Kagi! And offering links about a product is ace. But you know I’m in Australia, it’s right there, so why show me a link to Sweetwater which I cannot use?

Vlad

sj26 We do not know you are in Australia 🙂 And even if we did, we do not know where Sweetwater is. And even if we did, it is not clear that you may not be interested in seeing it. People look for things outside of their geo-location all the time. So it is a fairly complex issue with very little perceived impact.

sj26

We do not know you are in Australia

Huh? What's this then?

Vlad

sj26 This is self selected. Does not tell us you are actually in this region, just that you want to prioritize results from this region.

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?

Grooty

I feel for me that most of the time when i'm searching for a product, and want a link to buy it, it's probably in the region that i set my search engine to. When searching for products, I also get American results (as an EU citizen), which of course doesn't really apply to me. Google does it better where it prioritizes region specific shops more.

On a side note, this seems kinda related to this post.

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.

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