Use my location when searching for local businesses

CrunchyFritos

Similar to how users can allow the weather widget to use precise location, allow Kagi to access the user’s precise location when searching for local businesses. These permissions should be revokable in settings.

When I search for a business, Google doesn’t require me to specify my location in order to get the website of the local business that I am looking for. I’d like Kagi to be able to do the same in a privacy preserving way. Currently I just use !g for finding local results but would rather not go to Google.

marcel001122

How can a location be provided and search against in a privacy preserving way? It has to be a temporary compromise if user wants to tell Kagi exactly where they are using GPS data.

Duwayne

This is the biggest dissconnect between google search and these privacy based searches.

if i type something generic into google like "Home Depot" i am getting the one closest to me, with their hours, phone number and everything relevant.

with Kagi i get a generic blob about the company and their URL.

it would massively close the gap if there was an option to allow Kagi to see my location for the search. ( even if they don't save your location on their server and just use your current location to get local results at the time of the search as a opt in option ).

marcel001122
I think if Kagi don't store your location / save it to their servers its a good compromise. I'm okay with Kagi knowing my location at the time of the search if they then forget it after and don't pass it on to Google etc.

CrunchyFritos

marcel001122 Just like with the weather widget, my suggestion is that sharing location data with Kagi is always on an opt-in basis and should be easily and clearly revocable for within settings. This is understandably a compromise, but I would rather trust Kagi to do this in as privacy-preserving a manner as possible over the alternatives like Google.

JoeTortuga

Honestly, the browswer and mobile devices all have location as a permission you can request and be granted onetime/always/never. That seems to be privacy-preserving -- at least it puts it explicitly in my hands. I like the lack of ads and ai summaries on default kagi, but the search 'near me' has my wife wanting to leave the service. It's not functioning as expected from my desktop nor my mobile devices, and that's disheartening.

MarkB

Not having the ability to use my location (my choice) makes the mapping pretty useless, seem to end up in all sorts of locations randomly and then use multiple searches to correct.

jmaxxz

This is one area where Kagi is clearly just worse at returning results. It would be nice to have some options. Whether that is the ability to set a default location (at whatever granularity one is comfortable doing) in the personalization section or requesting location from phone on a per search basis. Searching for a park by name or a restaurant just return junk results today.

jtgarrett

This is literally the only thing that irritates me about Kagi, and it seems like it should be table stakes for a search engine. I don't think I'm alone in constantly asking my search engine "pizza near me," or "car wash near me." Beyond this, I adore Kagi and very much want it to grow and thrive.

CrunchyFritos

@Luis Any updates on this?