Google more useful when looking for article titled "Make Pathing Easier with Aliases in SvelteKit"

leftium

There was an article I was trying to find again with the title "Make Pathing Easier with Aliases in SvelteKit"

I remembered "pathing" was a unique word in the article and that it was about Svelte(Kit). I tried these two queries:

My query should have included "easier" instead of "better" and "sveltekit" is more relevant than "svelte," but Google gave arguably better results.

Perhaps Kagi could relax the verbatim keyword requirement, or offer to relax it when there are few search results:

Vlad

leftium I get the result as expected. Is verbatim turned on for you?

leftium

Vlad

Ah, yes. Verbatim was turned on but I didn't realize (it was even a setting.) I guess that's why there was a "clear" button in the search tools. (Notice my Google search tools sidebar makes it clear if the results are verbatim or not ;-)

When I turn off the verbatim setting, Google's results are still a little better, but the gap is not as big:

"svelte better pathing"
- Google: 3rd result
- Kagi: _22nd result (far below the fold)
"sveltekit better pathing"
- Google: 2nd result
- Kagi: _6th result (above the fold)

Now I know Kagi can also toggle the verbatim setting. I think when I started using Kagi, one of its touted features was verbatim search and there wasn't an option for non-verbatim searches.

Edit: I made a mockup that included the verbatim setting. And the setting was not enabled. So I must have known at some point, at some level. And toggled the setting at some point. However I still managed to forget about Kagi's verbatim setting~

Vlad

leftium Any idea how to better surface that verbatim is on as it radically changes the results and can create confusion if you forget you turned it on?

leftium

Vlad I gave a suggestion in my original post:

offer to relax [verbatim mode] when there are few search results

So when there are only a handful of results like in my case, Kagi show a message about verbatim mode with a link/button to turn it off.

I'm not sure about the other direction, where the user starts in "all results" and wants only verbatim results. I think showing the verbatim status in the sidebar would really help. As would actually showing the status in the search tools bar.

Vlad

leftium I like this idea!

How are you thinking about the presentation/content of this message and what it would be its triggering condition?

leftium

Vlad Kagi already does something similar when there are no results:

I would extend this for when there are few results.

It would replace the button that loads more results.
If possible, I would also indicate the potential number of results if the filters are removed.
This would be a good place to throw a link educating users about what filters/verbatim are.

Triggering condition: filters are active and there are less than a full page of results? Or maybe when the difference between filtered results and non-filtered results is massive.

leftium

Vlad

I thought of how to surface "verbatim" mode when showing all results:

Google shows which words are missing (not verbatim) and offers to show more (verbatim set of) results. (https://www.google.com/search?q=leftium+toml)

Vlad

leftium What is a full page of results? 10?

leftium

Vlad I would say if Kagi determined there were not enough results to show a "More results" button, but without filters there are lot more results, then a similar UI should be placed at the bottom similar to the "We haven't found anything" UI

Vlad

We will work on a notice for verbatim mode