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TL;DR of the suggestion: Let users create lenses with custom pinned/promoted/blocked domains.

I'd like to suggest as a new feature for Kagi "super lenses" or portals, with additional features from current lenses. The most important feature addition would be to let the lens creator make a list of domain rankings that are connected to that particular lens. This would open up for users to make lenses that can become incredibly useful for other people and even help Kagi get more customers.

For example, a person could make a lens for scuba diving with domains up ranked, down ranked or pinned as they relate to scuba diving and nothing else. Another person could make a lens for lawyers in her specific region, pinning domains with laws in that region and down ranking some domains that deal with law in a different region, if they keep showing up. Another person could make a lens for open source software, and make sure that Thunderbird is pinned when somebody searches for e-mail with that lens. A music lens would show a certain result for the term "Scorpions", while a biology lens would show another.

Now why would anybody care for this, except the lens creator? I suggest that these "super lenses" should only be available to be made as public lenses (just an idea). I also suggest that the Kagi team could copy/fork lenses that are of outstanding quality or usefulness, giving them official links for easier access, such as for example birdwatching.kagi.com or travel-nz.kagi.com or architecture.kagi.com or frenchcuisine.kagi.com, to use some made up examples.

If you really want to go nuts, you could also let the super lens creator specify an AI system prompt, which would be used only in connection to that lens.

Another use is for enterprise, where the organisation might want to have a site ranking especially for their employees, for schools, and so on.

The first super lens to create would of course be a lens holding the aggregated community ranking list, as suggested in this thread: https://kagifeedback.org/d/4502-opt-in-collaborative-shared-result-ranking

    Hi Carl! To reiterare, you are proposing a super lens that ranks domains (blocked, lowered, raised, pinned) as an alternative of the existing filtering options (domain: include, exclude; results: include kw, exclude kw, time, region)?

    What might this experience resemble?
    Some intial thoughts: I imagine it to be part of SERP and work similarly to adding songs to a playlist. Additionally, we would need to build some sort of algorithm to prevent bad actors from spoiling these super lenses, if editing is open to everyone.

    • carl replied to this.

      Hi Luis! If you compare include/exclude to a rank list, I guess the pinned/blocked would be the equivalent? In these "super lenses", I think that at least region setting should be an option.

      In practice, a user would create a lens as normal to start with, and then start upranking and downranking domains as she prefers, to serve the purpose of the lens. Without these rankings having any effect on her normal search results.

      Luis Some intial thoughts: I imagine it to be part of SERP and work similarly to adding songs to a playlist. Additionally, we would need to build some sort of algorithm to prevent bad actors from spoiling these super lenses, if editing is open to everyone.

      I expressed myself in a confusing way. By "public" I don't mean that anybody can edit the lenses, but that everybody can use it. The creator will still own it. Then, in the case of very good lenses, Kagi can fork it and make it "official". Meaning that the Kagi team would be admins of the official lens, and the original creator would keep their lens.

      For certain subject matters, I could even see Kagi having official lenses that differ between regions and languages. To take an example that many people use a search engine for: looking up pharmaceuticals. These have different names in different languages, and different legal status and recommendations depending on region. Here, it would be very useful if super lenses had different rank lists depending on region, as long as there is such a lens made of good quality.

      If we take the current demographic of Kagi users, I think they would in no time make high quality lenses for things such as foss.kagi.com , archlinux.kagi.com or python.kagi.com

      A later feature could be that the standard Kagi search will suggest lenses in an unobtrusive way to normal users, based on keywords they've used in their search. Maybe as a button to apply a super lens to their current search, without the user having to add the lens to their list.

      As for initial discoverability, maybe just a list where user created super lenses gets added automatically and a ranking based on "new / most used" and a list for the official super lenses also. With the risk and probability that controversial user created lenses will be in that non-official list.

        To further extend the functionality of these super lenses or portals, the lens creator could be given the ability to pin certain pages for certain search terms. For example if I use a lens for MacOS, then the MacOS version of software could be pinned when searching for "Microsoft Office" or "Photoshop". Or maybe somebody wants to create a lens for finding what they consider to be more ethical product alternatives, and they want to pin a certain result for people searching "e-mail" or "dish soap" with that lens. Or an enterprise wants to guide their employees to very specific results for certain search terms.

        Or, if your god damned car broke down again, there can be a lens for that make and model, so you don't have to stuff your query with that info every time.

        In a way, what I'm suggesting will be to combine the search engine vs humanly curated catalog approach to finding information online, getting the best of both worlds. A plethora of niche "small web" catalogs.

          Vlad stickied the discussion .

            This is an interesting idea, I could see this having value.

            Vlad unstickied the discussion .
              6 days later

              I would love the ability to be able to customize domain rankings that are specific to a lens. I could see this being extremely useful for certain types of research. I would prefer if I could have the option to keep my custom lens private though.

              It would also be pretty cool to be able to use this type of lens with custom assistants as well.

              2 months later

              • Mmaurs

              • Post #10
              • Edited

              I really like this idea, but I think the social aspect needs to be fleshed out a bit before i'd adopt a public lens. At the very least, some sort of forking ability.

              I can see myself using something like this as a good starting point, but I think i'd quickly groan over some choice that I didnt agree with. Some sort of fork/update/personal-overlay...something would make it worthwhile. I'm not really into consuming someone else's lens with no control.

              • carl replied to this.

                • carl

                • Post #11
                • Edited

                maurs The idea wouldn't be to replace your default Kagi search with these lenses, but rather to use them when they are convenient. Let's say you're going on a holiday to Greece. You'd use the "Greece Tourism" lens to help you plan, which has been made by people who are experts on the subject. You're not going to use it after you're done with it and it's not going to be there to bother your normal searches. Unless you want it, of course.

                Now let's say there's a Kagi user who is an experienced Greece traveller and who doesn't agree with the choices made in that lens. Maybe he/she wants to focus on more frugal travel options, or maybe wheelchair accessible travel in Greece. Then they can fork that lens and make their own variant of the recipe.

                    • Mmaurs

                    • Post #12
                    • Edited

                    carl

                    That sounds reasonable to me. If I can fork it I'm happy 🙂

                    Some sort of track/merge/overlay would be out-standing. I'd be pretty excited if there were some facility to "follow the scuba superlens but also apply these personal tweaks". Personalized utilization that also tracks upstream would be very "have cake and also eat it too" in my opinion.

                        • Mmaurs

                        • Post #13
                        • Edited

                        carl birdwatching.kagi.com or travel-nz.kagi.com or architecture.kagi.com or frenchcuisine.kagi.com

                        Just re-reading this - the subdomain aspect gives a bit of pause. I think just branding-wise, i'd be a bit more subtle. Perhaps even call out in the uri that it is user or ai managed content ranking/promotion.

                        scuba.kagi.com reads to me as: "Kagi's" scuba site
                        kagi.com/lenses/community/scuba reads: "Kagi hosted community thing"
                        kagi.com/lenses/ai-doggo/scuba reads: "Kagi's AI generated thing"

                        • carl replied to this.

                            • carl

                            • Post #14

                            maurs Yes, the idea is that Kagi can make subdomains for lenses that they want to make official. Users would not have any such methods.

                                • Mmaurs

                                • Post #15
                                • Edited

                                carl huh. i still feel off about the idea of kagi creating content, vs facilitation/curation of user content. those two concepts are regulated a bit differently (at least in freedom land), and I percieve them both very differently as well.

                                I mean sure though. I have no axe to grind in this regard.

                                    a month later

                                    • dps

                                    • Post #16

                                    Kagi is super customizable and powerful, but having "batteries included" lenses with your subscription could help less technical users take advantage of them

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