diff --git a/src/scripts/search-engine-pagefind.ts b/src/scripts/search-engine-pagefind.ts
index e6b902add9..02a088b87a 100644
--- a/src/scripts/search-engine-pagefind.ts
+++ b/src/scripts/search-engine-pagefind.ts
@@ -12,10 +12,12 @@ import {
   type SearchResult,
 } from './search-engine';
 
-// Rows fetched at a time. Pagefind's own UI shows five and offers the rest on
-// demand; thirty, because `byNameThenDepth` reorders within a page and needs
-// enough of the list to have something to reorder.
-const PAGE_SIZE = 30;
+// Rows fetched at a time, and a fragment fetch for each one. Pagefind's own UI
+// shows five and offers the rest on demand; twenty, because `byNameThenDepth`
+// reorders within a page and needs enough of the list to have something to
+// reorder, and because a reader who has scrolled past twenty rows is served
+// better by a narrower query than by row twenty-one.
+const PAGE_SIZE = 20;
 
 // Above this share of the corpus, a query is too general to rank rather than
 // unanswerable, and the overlay says so instead of reporting nothing found.
@@ -84,8 +86,7 @@ type PagefindApi = {
 const MINIMUM_SCORE = 8;
 
 // Sections are their own rows, so they compete with pages for the reader's first
-// screenful. Three headings per page across thirty results made two thirds of
-// the list headings.
+// screenful. Three headings per page made two thirds of the list headings.
 /** Headings shown under one page. */
 const SECTION_LIMIT = 2;
 /** How many of the leading pages get headings at all. */
@@ -281,7 +282,7 @@ export function pagefindEngine(bundlePath: string): SearchEngine {
   let loading: Promise<PagefindApi | null> | null = null;
   // Everything the last search matched, and how much of it has been handed over.
   // A stub is a score and a promise of its fragment, so holding a thousand of
-  // them costs nothing and saves searching again to show row thirty-one.
+  // them costs nothing and saves searching again to show row twenty-one.
   // `promoted` is the page `namedPage` pulled forward, whose own stub is still
   // waiting further down `stubs`.
   let page: {