This is what the results on Kagi for a popular Chicago restaurant are:
Vs Google:
And DuckDuckGo:
If I'm in a foreign area, or just trying to find a place to eat, looking up a restaurant, bar, or shop is one of the first things I do. It's also one of the number one places (wouldn't mind a shopping widget) that I think Kagi could improve upon, and ideally hit feature parity or exceed feature parity with Google and other search engines.
The Kagi experience when it comes to restaurants is generally fine. In this example it shows accurate hours, phone number, and website. You even get a little Yelp review rating (with no way to click into it to read reviews, have seen this on some results so 🤷) at the bottom. As a base, this is great. However, this can be improved on. Here are a few of my ideas on what could be added, and feel free to add others in the replies, may update this list if this gets popular:
- Short description of the place: Often readily available on sites like Yelp, this should be a no-brainer. I've even seen it on some places, but not most.
- Real reviews of the place: Something about just being able to see reviews right off the bat, not having to deal with any logins and whatnot of Yelp or TripAdvisor is awesome. A pipe dream would be to link to professional reviews like that of Eater or local news, but that's down the line. Being able to see reviews of a place just from search would be a great addition, Bing actually does this very well.
- Pictures/Menu of the spot: This also feels like a big missing feature, but I can understand why as it seems difficult, especially menus. Having that availability and not having to dig through a poorly made website to find the menu is always welcome, and some pictures to spruce up the look of the result wouldn't hurt either. I've linked a possible way to do that down below.
- Price-per-person: As a person on a budget when I'm going out to eat, this is crucial. I often just go to Google for this one feature. It seems to be available via several APIs, and (to me at least) is a must-have.
- "Amenities" list: This could include if a place has outdoor seating, vegetarian/vegan options, pet friendly, child friendly, reservations needed, etc. Oddly enough, Snapchat seems to do this very well.
A couple of smaller things/nice-to-haves:
- Social Media accounts: Just a nice way to interact with the company, not super essential but a nice-to-have.
- Wait time estimator: I can't tell if Google has this available or not, but it is admittedly super cool. There seems to have some projects to replicate this, but don't seem to be maintained. Regardless, a cool feature and something that my mom would switch over for.
- Get delivery button: Self-explanatory, but probably hard to do. Would be a nice quality-of-life feature, though.
- Reservations button: Again, self-explanatory, but hard to do. An integration with OpenTable or a similar service could make that easier, but in no way a necessary feature to have.
This is a lot. Google has spent years and ungodly amounts of money to give you this nice little neat wall of text and buttons with all the things you might want to know. I personally don't know how Google gets all of this data, but what I do know is that the Google Places API is a way to get some of it. Link. Within this API there is the Places Photos API which would be cool. Here are a few more suggestions:
TripAdvisor API Link
DoorDash Marketplace API Link
Yelp Fusion API (or the expanded use of) Link
Overall, I'd love to hear from the community on what you think of this massive idea's list, and hopefully from Vlad or someone else at Kagi on how this sounds or if it's already in the works. Thanks.
