Prefixing @ (the at symbol) to a query doesnt give a results page (redirects to home)

ChristenGottschlich

I was trying to search for "@home". It sent me to the Kagi search home page. This happened whether i used my browser search bar or the home page. Putting my query in quotes gave me results.

I expected to get a search result page, or a notification that i had used some keyword or search parameter wrong. Maybe @ does do something specific but i cant find any info in the documentation nor forums about it. Is this even a bug?

eirk

It seems like replacing the ! With @ in any bang causes a redirection to the Kagi search home page

z64

Hey all - we soft launched a new feature where, for example, @r query searches for query site:reddit.com instead of redirecting to reddit itself. This works automatically for every bang.

From a feature request here:
https://kagifeedback.org/d/1231-search-operator-for-site-filtering-via-existing-bang-shortcuts-bongs

It's a good question what should occur when no query is present. Right now we have a pending change that will search simply for site:reddit.com with no additional terms, so it is a bit more clear.

In the meantime, yes, it can be "escaped" with either quotes or placing something like . in front of the terms, which I imagine will not affect the results much. An additional step we could do that comes to mind is adding a setting for this behavior if its too intrusive.

But we are open to your feedback - what do you think?

ChristenGottschlich

Oh, thats a very cool feature! I am using it immediately.

In that case, hmm, thats a tough one. I imagine there will be documentation eventually of this feature. If there was earlier, i wouldnt have made this post. So i dont think anything needs to be done. But i do like:

Right now we have a pending change that will search simply for site:reddit.com with no additional terms, so it is a bit more clear.

I think that would be much more useful and consistent.

eirk

Or, perhaps making @r search for "@r" as a raw query, bc what is the likelihood of someone wanting to just search "site:reddit.com"

pixel

eirk

We thought about that but it may be confusing if you search for @r and it goes through, but then you do @r thing and now the query completely changes and applies the site: operator.

It also allows for some discoverability, since in the original post they would've went to the search page with the site: operator applied and realize that it does something like that.

We are open to feedback though, of course!

ChristenGottschlich

eirk You should try it, its interesting what Kagi pulls up.

eirk

pixel Yeah, I guess. IMO searching for @r is actually less common than searching for site:reddit.com