Automatically redirect search query to other search engine when run out of credit

Browsing6853

It will be quite annoying for users testing the service with $5 to run out of credits and being stopped by an empty Kagi search during the decision period. It will be much more comfortable to have Kagi using Google (or any user preferred search engine) as fallback without needing to click any extra button.

My proposal: Show the special page informing about the lack of credits every day (or a user preferred period of time?) in their first search and create a checkbox (that will remember user's choice) to "remember me again tomorrow and redirect to Google for now". After that, the user will be able to search normally for the said period of time and everything will be redirected to Google without any user interaction. Maybe the interface could be worked together with the Offer shortcut to search on other search engine in a new tab idea.

Vlad

Browsing6853 This is an interesting point.

We need to be showing empty balance notification and perhaps it can be accompanies by Search elsewhere box

like this

I am not a fan of making it a preference (how do you turn it off? sounds it would need a setting etc)

Browsing6853

Vlad Isn't it better to make the out of balance page more of an error page, like the "We haven’t found anything"? I assume most of the queries are done from the search bar (specially for power users) instead of "https://kagi.com", which would give lower priority to the popup in main page.

About the design, maybe one of these three locations? (1 makes much more sense IMO, though)

Browsing6853

About the choice of alternative search engine, just reinforcing what I said in the other post, allowing the user to set a bang as fallback (instead of three options like Brave search) is the best option because it will work very well with custom bangs in the future. You can call it "fallback search engine" and describe it as something that you can use to create a better user experience and cite some examples like offering a shortcut, redirect when the user run out of credit or when Kagi servers have some big problem.

BomberFish

When you run out of free searches, Kagi gives you the option to search with Google or Bing. DDG should be added as I feel it protects the user's privacy like Kagi.

area69

BomberFish I think Startpage should also be added.

kaff

Qwant's better. It makes no contracts you wouldn't like nor does it censor results

Vlad

There is a large number of search engines out there so instead of stuffing them all on the page we have selected the two largest. We are doing this as a courtesy to the free user and is not something I would spend more time building (our resources should go building features that paid users want).

jason

We are doing this as a courtesy to the free user and is not something I would spend more time building (our resources should go building features that paid users want).

Vlad The post starts with "It will be quite annoying for users testing the service with $5", which would be the "standard" plan, right? I don't see how you concluded from there that this is a feature request for free users 🤔.

This said, I am a paid user and I agree with the request: I have seen many people online saying "I am ready to pay for my search engine, but not $25". You can try to convince them that they probably won't have to pay $25, or you can offer them this feature: "Just set your limit to $10 (or whatever you are willing to pay) and a fallback. After your monthly credit is used, Kagi will automatically redirect all your searches to your fallback until the end of the month".

Maybe that would help people get started, and for those who would need the "ultimate" plan but can't afford it, it allows them to support you up to the amount of their choice. I am maybe naive, but I believe that quite a few users try Kagi not because it's the best, but because they want to support your model (at least it is my case). Maybe you should not under-estimate that.

ajimix

@Vlad this is tagged wrongly as “Done” as the title says “automatically redirect…” but is not automatic so should not be Done unless I’m wrong. Would be great to configure where to redirect with either a bang or a url + %s and let it be automatic when the credit has run off

Phemist

ajimix Assuming your browser multibar is your main entry into the search engine, the best solution i have found so far is to define a custom bang that in the normal use-case simply points to https://kagi.com/search?q=%s call it e.g. "!fallback"

You can create the bang here:
https://kagi.com/settings?p=custom_bangs_form

Make your kagi search engine configuration point to "https://kagi.com/search?q=!fallback %s", which basically means you will always use this bang for every single query. Because the custom bang is pointed to kagi.com, it will redirect to kagi.com without the search query and search as normal. This will not count double towards your query count (bangs generally don't).

Now, when you finally reach your search limit, simply change the !fallback bang to something like "https://duckduckgo.com?q=%s".

Because every single query done from your multibar always uses this !fallback bang, you will now automatically always search duckduckgo in an account-wide manner. Unfortunately, the switch back to kagi will not be automatic, so you will need to add a calendar reminder to do this at the beginning of your new period.

Note that because bangs are resolved recursively, this does not break compatibility with other bangs. E.g. "!fallback !ddg !bing test" will resolve just fine and end up searching "test" in bing. Bing will not resolve it further, so in !bing the bangs still go boom 😉

mumu

I agree with jason. I'm a paid user and found this because I was looking for a fallback after my $10 of searches is up for the month. I think Kagi's search results are the best out there and I support the model of paying explicitly instead of implicitly with my privacy for my searches, but I can't bring myself to spend more than $10 a month for search still right now. My hope is that by continuing to pay, eventually you'll be able to bring the cost of search down to the point that I can always use Kagi.

In the meantime though I'd love to fallback automatically to another better-than-Google engine of my choice once I run out of credit. I keep slamming bug queries and other random things at work into my browser's search/address bar out of habit. I'd rather that does something useful I've configured in Kagi vs needing to change browser settings on each device twice a month to default to something else until the next billing cycle.

Vlad

mumu Thanks for chiming in,. How would you imagine the UX/UI for this feature to be?

mumu

Vlad A setting in either settings/search or settings/billing to specify a fallback search engine if credits are exhausted. I probably would look for it in settings/billing, and expect it on the splash screen that shows up currently when you try to do a search, have no credits, and don't have a fallback set.

Vlad

mumu How would one specify a fallback search engine (given there are 20+ search engines out there?) Would you expect us to list them all?

MagicMouse

Vlad Rather than listing all possible options, perhaps there could be a small list of the most "popular" fallback search engines, followed by a box which would allow users to enter their own search string, like when defining custom bangs.

mumu

Vlad In general a select with 20+ items in it is not normally seen as a hard problem. How you solve it depends on your chosen design language. Personally I'd probably like a filterable select box with all 20+ of the common options alongside an option to define a custom search string for an option not covered (as MagicMouse suggested).