Shared search links do not show the same results as the original

edapstah

I was discussing an unrelated issue on Discord and I shared links to 2 similar searches.

After sharing, I double-checked my links on non-logged-in browser to verify others would see the same results, and I discovered that the results are not infact the same.

Here are the links:
typo: https://kagi.com/search?q=what+happend+2014+2015+canada+dollar+exchange&r=no_region&sh=PJU3P8KWLVEWI3EAGEJ-3g
fixed typo: https://kagi.com/search?q=what+happened+2014+2015+canada+dollar+exchange&r=no_region&sh=JNJ8XCFpBe8bOZgnS2cMFA

On my side the top results are 'quora.com' and 'cclgroup.com' respectively. But when viewed by others, the top result for both searches is 'exchange-rates.org'. I do no thave exchanges-rates.org blocked or down-ranked.

I was able to confirm another user on the discord channel was also receiving different results when viewing the links.

My results:

Results from another user after they followed the links I shared:

I would expect the results from a shared search results page to appear exactly the same when viewed by another user.

(*edit: not sure if it's relevant, but the exchange-rates.org results seems like it might come from the Bing index, it doesn't appear on Google at all, but tops the result on Bing.com)

z64

Hiya - this is working as intended. We do not store any search results. The share links effectively are just a "passcode" for anyone else to try the search on their own, without an account.

There's no plans to change this at this time.

batuhan

z64 It's important to archive the sharing link using a web archive service because the results could change.

edapstah

I see, that's understandable! Thanks for the response.

I'm not sure it fully explains why different users would be getting different results for the same search though? Unless search indexes have some variability based on server region, I guess. (But that wouldn't fully explain why I got different results from a non-logged in browser on the same PC)