Reduce number of searches for trial users

Dumb

Too lazy to create a new account and see if this is already done or not but an easy way to prevent bad actors from abusing the trial system is to have people attach a card to the account before being able to use the free searches. A simple authorization charge will let kagi know if they have any funds on the card or not. There’s no real way to truly stop people from abusing the system other than not offering a trial at all but such measures may discourage some people at least.

TyroneHelmsman

Dumb Any form of user verification is an efficient method to reduce abuse. But it comes to the cost of users' privacy. As Kagi claims to be a privacy-respecting search engine, requiring user verification should be avoided. Therefore, Kagi should come up with a different approach to decrease the occurrence of trial spamming.

voltaire

Dumb Please don't require credit card verification for any type of user. It would be a nightmare in terms of user privacy.

The main thing I’d like to add is that we don't know if there's any abuse at the moment. Only the developers know. So unless there's, in fact, a significant abuse, there might be no reason to implement anti-abuse measures. Of course, such features may still be implemented proactively.

Vlad

TyroneHelmsman We found that 100 is a nice round number that is easy to comprehend, simple and effective. There are a few bad actors but any sort of number will run into the same problem with the existing system.

A better problem to solve would be perhaps how to get more people to try Kagi. Appreciate the thoughts!

carl

Vlad A better problem to solve would be perhaps how to get more people to try Kagi. Appreciate the thoughts!

What do you think of my idea suggested above, where Kagi has a "trending searches" page? Clicking any of the trends would bring up a free example search for that query. If this is dynamically updated, it could turn into something of a front page of the web. It would heavily favour news searches, but isn't news also something that people do search a lot for?

Vlad

carl We prefer not to save any searches.

nichu42

Vlad Thanks for that! Only non-existent data is safe data.

fxgn

@TyroneHelmsman by the way, I would say that 100 searches are absolutely not enough to evaluate Kagi. When I was trying it out, it wasn't nearly enough for me, and I had to create a second trial account (I asked for permission to do that in the Discord, and Vlad said it's ok). 30 searches is a tiny amount.

breca

fxgn

Found this thread by search and was surprised to find this topic. I echo @fxgn's sentiment, as a new user setting Kagi on my phone and desktop I hit 100 searches in 13 days. I'm time poor and haven't even scratched the surface of the available features, just plugged it in and used it like a search engine.

I think its the pagination of results counting as a search that amplified this count for me. My search inputs can be downright monosyllabic sometimes which is probably something I should retrain.

I'm sure browsers opting towards executing searches unless you are explicitly typing http:// / https:// into address fields or using bookmarks also played a small part.

Regardless, hitting this hard limit has put a downer on my experience as it kind of came or of nowhere for me. A visual indicator or occasional banner, maybe combined with some CSS that bubbles a +1 each time I edge towards this limit might have urged me to spent some time actually trialling features before I ran out of gas.

While something like this can be sidestepped/exploited that doesn't mean everyone will... I certainly can't be bothered but perhaps I'm a minority.

breca

As a new user I'm not going to go to the billing page unless I'm ready to throw money which typically I won't do until that decision point is handed down (which is consequentially where I'm at now).

Almost all my searches were conducted via the context of my browsers search/URL bar, so I'm not going to see it there.

What's in the search input on Kagi's result page is not something I pay attention to. In my brain, that contains the text I just input and I'm here for search results, so I scan right past that.

breca Regardless, hitting this hard limit has put a downer on my experience as it kind of came or of nowhere for me. A visual indicator or occasional banner, maybe combined with some CSS that bubbles a +1 each time I edge towards this limit might have urged me to spent some time actually trialling features before I ran out of gas.