It's absolutely how LLMs should work, and IME they do. Why write a full question if a search phrase works just as well? Everything in "Could you recommend xyz to me?" except "xyz" is redundant and only useful when you talk to actual humans with actual social norms to observe. (Sure, there used to be a time when LLMs would give better answers if you were polite to them, but I doubt that matters anymore.) Indeed I've been thinking of codifying this by adding a system prompt that says something like "If the user makes a query that looks like a search phrase, phrase your response non-conversationally as well".