A New Web Crawler Search UI: AI Hints, Dark Mode, Infinite Scroll, Embeddable Mode, OG Thumbnails and Price, Language, Source and Sentiment Filters
The Web Crawler Search UI gains an AI answer layer, three new layout modes, thumbnails, and a full set of filters and sort options. Most of it can be set from the URL and toggled live from the toolbar.
01 AI Hints
Click the AI Hints button on any search and you get a streaming AI-generated summary that synthesises the top results into a concise answer. It works in both full and embedded modes, and it uses your actual indexed content as context, so the answers are grounded in your data rather than generic. Set ai=yes in your URL to trigger it automatically on page load.
02 Themes and layouts
- Dark mode. Add
ui_theme=darkto your search URL and the entire interface switches to a dark navy palette. Results, filters, buttons, pagination, AI Hints and code blocks all adapt automatically. Toggle it live with the theme button in the toolbar. - Full-width layout. Add
layout=fullwidthand results stretch edge to edge across the entire viewport, which suits wide monitors and full-width pages. Toggle it on the fly with the layout button in the toolbar; the default mode keeps the familiar contained width. - Embeddable mode. Set
topbar=offto hide the search header and filters, leaving clean results with a minimal status bar showing result count and timing. This is intended for embedding results inside your own website via an iframe. The AI Hints button stays accessible in the compact bar.
03 Infinite scroll by default
Infinite scroll is now the default pagination style: results load automatically as you scroll down, with no clicking through pages. If you prefer traditional page numbers, switch at any time with the pagination toggle in the toolbar, or set pagination_style=pages in your URL. Your choice is remembered across searches.
04 Thumbnails from Open Graph tags
When og=yes (the default), results display thumbnail previews pulled from each page's Open Graph meta tags. Set og=no to hide thumbnails for a text-only, faster-loading results view. Image search mode (in=images) always shows thumbnails regardless of the og setting.
05 Filtering and sorting
Price filtering and sorting work on any index with price_f and currency_s fields, and the Advanced Filters panel shows a slider UI when price data is available. Language and source filters are populated automatically from your indexed content, and both update dynamically based on what your index actually contains. Freshness and sentiment sorting are set through the same fresh parameter.
| Parameter | Effect |
|---|---|
price_min, price_max | Filter products by price range |
price_sort=asc / desc | Sort by price |
lang | Filter by detected language, or use the Languages dropdown |
source | Filter by source domain, or use the Sources dropdown |
fresh=yes / no | Sort by newest first, or use pure relevance ranking |
fresh=positive / negative | Surface results by sentiment, on indexes with sentiment analysis |
06 Blank descriptions fixed
Some indexes were showing search results with blank descriptions. When the Solr highlighter could not find matching terms in the description field, results appeared with no text at all, even though the document had a perfectly good description. The fallback logic now correctly shows the original description when no highlighted snippet is available.