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Tried out a few searches that I’ve recently struggled with on both DDG and Google, very impressed. Seems worth it, especially if I can get a license through wo

Tried out a few searches that I’ve recently struggled with on both DDG and Google, very impressed. Seems worth it, especially if I can get a license through work. I wonder how they will keep their results shielded from SEO spam if they hit a critical mass. Presumably Google would love to have useful results beneath all their ads, but can’t seem to win over all of the “organic” blogs.

freediver 3y ago
> I wonder how they will keep their results shielded from SEO spam if they hit a critical mass. We mitigate SEO spam effectively by downranking websites that use ads or trackers. SEO spam websites predominantly rely on ads for monetization, which makes them easily detectable. This strategy of combating ads in every form, everywhere, has proven to be an efficient method for prioritizing high-quality web results.
- internetter 3y ago
  Which really, I feel, demonstrates the perverse incentives of free search. These pages display ads, so upranking them means more revenue for google, and you do the opposite. Cool. I was wondering if there's any student discounts? For research I certainly search like a professional, but don't have the income stream to compensate.
  - ftaghn 3y ago
    > Which really, I feel, demonstrates the perverse incentives of free search. These pages display ads, so upranking them means more revenue for google, and you do the opposite. Google's creators had correctly identified this problem and their knowledge of it is why early google was good. https://alexandre.storelli.fr/advertising-and-mixed-motives-sergey-brin-larry-page-1998/ https://alexandre.storelli.fr/advertising-and-mixed-motives-... > Advertising and Mixed Motives (Sergey Brin & Larry Page, 1998) > Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for cellular phone is "The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", a study which explains in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a cell phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its high importance as judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the web. It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media, we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. > But we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm. Once they earned their place as a monopoly the same understanding was applied to wield it on the darker side. > “We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.” They know exactly what it is that they are doing.
- prartichoke 3y ago
  Pretty simple then. Just doing the exact opposite of what Google is doing. Makes sense
- arealaccount 3y ago
  I know this isn’t a support channel, but is there a way to use Kagi with Firefox Focus on iOS without having to go through the login flow each time? I’d be happy to open some intermediary app or something.
  - freediver 3y ago
    Yes, Kagi supports private session links, provided you can use it in your browser. [1] If not, I recommend cosidering Orion browser on iOS [2] with Kagi built in. [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/private-browser-sessions.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/private-browser-sessions.... [2] https://browser.kagi.com https://browser.kagi.com

freediver 3y ago

> I wonder how they will keep their results shielded from SEO spam if they hit a critical mass. We mitigate SEO spam effectively by downranking websites that use ads or trackers. SEO spam websites predominantly rely on ads for monetization, which makes them easily detectable. This strategy of combating ads in every form, everywhere, has proven to be an efficient method for prioritizing high-quality web results.

internetter 3y ago
Which really, I feel, demonstrates the perverse incentives of free search. These pages display ads, so upranking them means more revenue for google, and you do the opposite. Cool. I was wondering if there's any student discounts? For research I certainly search like a professional, but don't have the income stream to compensate.
- ftaghn 3y ago
  > Which really, I feel, demonstrates the perverse incentives of free search. These pages display ads, so upranking them means more revenue for google, and you do the opposite. Google's creators had correctly identified this problem and their knowledge of it is why early google was good. https://alexandre.storelli.fr/advertising-and-mixed-motives-sergey-brin-larry-page-1998/ https://alexandre.storelli.fr/advertising-and-mixed-motives-... > Advertising and Mixed Motives (Sergey Brin & Larry Page, 1998) > Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for cellular phone is "The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", a study which explains in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a cell phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its high importance as judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the web. It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media, we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. > But we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm. Once they earned their place as a monopoly the same understanding was applied to wield it on the darker side. > “We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.” They know exactly what it is that they are doing.
prartichoke 3y ago
Pretty simple then. Just doing the exact opposite of what Google is doing. Makes sense
arealaccount 3y ago
I know this isn’t a support channel, but is there a way to use Kagi with Firefox Focus on iOS without having to go through the login flow each time? I’d be happy to open some intermediary app or something.
- freediver 3y ago
  Yes, Kagi supports private session links, provided you can use it in your browser. [1] If not, I recommend cosidering Orion browser on iOS [2] with Kagi built in. [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/private-browser-sessions.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/private-browser-sessions.... [2] https://browser.kagi.com https://browser.kagi.com