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Since the beginning of the month, I've noticed that Kagi started including translated results from Reddit in my search results. I have my region set to NL on Kagi, and in some (but not all cases), this results in Reddit posts with a ?tl=nl query parameter.

These results are problematic for a few reasons:

  1. Duplicate results, but in a different language
  2. The translations are low-quality
  3. Misleading results when searching for non-English posts

The following search shows the problem:
https://kagi.com/search?q=metal+archives+between+the+buried+and+me&r=nl&sh=df4m9tas0K9zw38ULZ-yzA

The third result first shows an English Reddit post, which is followed by the exact same post, but with the ?tl=NL query parameter:

I expected these translated results to not get indexed at all. I have searched Discord for a potential fix, but did not find a way that cleans up my search results (other than blocking the domain altogether).

    I wrote the following CSS snippet that hides the translated results if the URL contains reddit.com and tl=:

    .__srgi:has(a[href*="reddit.com"][href*="tl="]) {
        display: none;
    }

    This hides translated sub-results (like in the screenshot above). I will update the CSS if I encounter different cases.

      10 days later

      Hi. We were able to reproduce this issue a week ago, but now we can't. Please inform us if you encounter any other similar examples. I'll mark this thread as nofix for now

        5 days later

        Luis I have run into the same issue a couple times. However, not always do I get it in the same way as the OP. In my case, sometimes I search in Dutch to get localized results. I then get only the Dutch translated result, not the original English post.

        This is really annoying, because it makes me think that I am looking at a local result, while it is in fact not local.

        Example:

        Connected to: EUROPE-WEST2
        Search link is: https://kagi.com/search?q=bluesky+servers+in+Nederland%3F
        It will be happening with the fifth link.

        • Luis replied to this.
          8 days later
          a month later

          bram

          Came here because i noticed reddit translated results too.

          But this css snippet didnt work for me, still shows the translated result

          EDIT: i even get non-sub-results translated, so i guess the css wont affect that one.

            a month later

            Also Thibaultmol Squid bram

            Here is a currently working CSS snippet that works on both the main and sub search results.

            /*
            Hide pre-translated webpages.
            "sri-group" is main result, "__srgi"  are sub results.
            You can append `:not(:has(a[href*="tl=en"]))` to allow English translations.
            */
            :is(div.__srgi, div.sri-group._ext_r):has(a[href*="tl="]) {
                display: none !important;
            }
              13 days later

              +1. This SEO shenanigans is seriously degrading search performance. When I'm looking for Dutch information I don't want to see totally irrelevant translated results from Reddit at the top of the page, but I also don't want to filter Reddit completely because the Dutch subreddits may actually have relevant content.

              jjrvi Your snippet is removing main search result that is not translated.

                As someone residing in a multilingual country in which english is an established but not a dominant language (Switzerland), I frequently run into scenarios where my (technical & english) search queries return auto translated reddit threads. This happens even though all my devices are set to US english and thus, I'm quite confident that my user agent is not transmitting e.g. German as a prioritized language.

                These auto translated reddit threads aren't horrible, but in my opinion still quite subpar. They also contain just enough tonal shift that even if they would be a useful match, I'm constantly left second guessing the contents. I'd rather just see the original thread (which is usually in the result set, but "demoted").

                TL;DR: I don't want to block or lower all reddit results (which are usually helpful), but all reddit results containing the ?tl=* query parameter (which are less so).

                As someone technical enough, I could imagine simply adding a regex (which is run against all result URLs) to a specific domain, gated behind some "advanced" menu option in the customization settings. That would allow me to achieve my result with a great amount of flexibility -- but I'm aware regex would be rather confusing to less technical people; so maybe there's another way to provide such filtering options instead?

                  18 days later

                  Hi, we've rolled out a fix for this specific use case. I'll merge your thread with an earlier report. If you intended this to be a generic feature request, please let us know.