4 ms·

So, how paid search engines like Kagi manages to bring useful results every time? Its results are superior, with way less spam and SEO optimized content.

mattnewton 3y ago
I have no idea; but I speculate this is one area challengers have it easier because a) there is no giant industry optimizing for ranking on Kagi. There are whole armies of people trying to game google search, meaning whatever heuristics they have would probably be rendered useless shortly if google were to adopt them. And b) Kagi has a much smaller, more technical userbase. So like the early web they can get away with a search experience tailored for those kinds of people and not millions of people powering on a smartphone as their first computer.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  The biggest power of Kagi is “you” are the algorithm. A page is optimizing for Kagi and providing bad results? Block them. You found a good website burrowed down? Raise/promote them. Kagi works for you, with your input. It doesn’t do “advanced guessing” by implicitly and opaquely processing your interaction with it.
  - mattnewton 3y ago
    Explicit control can work for ranking but can’t scale to the retrieval step of search - you aren’t going to sift through thousands of thousands of pages of potential results to give feedback on a meaningful portion of them, there must be some method of pulling pages to be ranked. This is where the gaming happens, with basically limitless spam domains that need to be filtered out. There just is no way Kagi is 100% relying on self reports for this.
    - asdff 3y ago
      The whole idea of the model is to fit it on some reference so you can project it onto new data you haven't classified yet. So your first few weeks, you might get some spam sure. But eventually if you are optimizing the system by e.g. only ranking technical blogs with no seo bullshit, then technical blogs with no seo bullshit is what would fit best with that model among the new data and what you see on your results. That can't be gamed without knowing the sort of model fit you are generating and this fit is defined by the user.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      The ranking is only relevant to you. It's part of Kagi's lenses and search tailored for you, by you approach. I guess their "Universal Summarizer" is a part of their indexer, so they try to understand what you want and provide you more relevant results. They probably have other signals and systems to detect spam and other unwanted things.
- amelius 3y ago
  Also Kagi is still in the phase of "let's give users what they want" instead of in the phase of "let's give shareholders what they want".
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    Since users are the ones who're financing Kagi, that phase will have no end until they become free and sell user data in a way.
xnx 3y ago
A lot of people on HN are very happy with Kagi, but I haven't seen examples of searches to understand where it is better. In a blind "taste test", I would be surprised if Kagi or Bing is preferred to Google for most searches.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  Well, all my daily searches, whether it be technical or daily mundane things return better results with less cruft than Google. Also, it notifies you if a page has excessive number of trackers. Combine it with personal website ranking and lenses, it surpasses Google easily. Also since it has no ads, there’s no noise. I don’t use Microsoft products, so I can’t comment on Bing.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  I did side by side for a while and Kagi was consistently superior to Google and bing. I think it boils down to they don’t try to cross sell advertisements so they’re more oriented towards actually providing better results rather than better paying results.
- dharmab 3y ago
  Kagi's killer feature can't be blind tested, because Google and Bing don't have it. The ability to pin, raise or block sites in your results is a game changer.
  - nostrademons 3y ago
    Interestingly, Google had that in 2008 (SearchWiki), but it got extremely low usage - enough that at a time when Google was serving 30K QPS, you could read the queries with SearchWiki interaction as they came in on a screen. I suspect this is a niche feature for power-users only. HN is filled with power users, so they love Kagi, but it doesn't necessarily translate to the masses.
    - dharmab 3y ago
      2008 didn't have Pinterest, fewer listicles, conspiracy websites were less mainstream, and mobile web was in its toddler phase.

mattnewton 3y ago

I have no idea; but I speculate this is one area challengers have it easier because a) there is no giant industry optimizing for ranking on Kagi. There are whole armies of people trying to game google search, meaning whatever heuristics they have would probably be rendered useless shortly if google were to adopt them. And b) Kagi has a much smaller, more technical userbase. So like the early web they can get away with a search experience tailored for those kinds of people and not millions of people powering on a smartphone as their first computer.

bayindirh 3y ago
The biggest power of Kagi is “you” are the algorithm. A page is optimizing for Kagi and providing bad results? Block them. You found a good website burrowed down? Raise/promote them. Kagi works for you, with your input. It doesn’t do “advanced guessing” by implicitly and opaquely processing your interaction with it.
- mattnewton 3y ago
  Explicit control can work for ranking but can’t scale to the retrieval step of search - you aren’t going to sift through thousands of thousands of pages of potential results to give feedback on a meaningful portion of them, there must be some method of pulling pages to be ranked. This is where the gaming happens, with basically limitless spam domains that need to be filtered out. There just is no way Kagi is 100% relying on self reports for this.
  - asdff 3y ago
    The whole idea of the model is to fit it on some reference so you can project it onto new data you haven't classified yet. So your first few weeks, you might get some spam sure. But eventually if you are optimizing the system by e.g. only ranking technical blogs with no seo bullshit, then technical blogs with no seo bullshit is what would fit best with that model among the new data and what you see on your results. That can't be gamed without knowing the sort of model fit you are generating and this fit is defined by the user.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    The ranking is only relevant to you. It's part of Kagi's lenses and search tailored for you, by you approach. I guess their "Universal Summarizer" is a part of their indexer, so they try to understand what you want and provide you more relevant results. They probably have other signals and systems to detect spam and other unwanted things.
amelius 3y ago
Also Kagi is still in the phase of "let's give users what they want" instead of in the phase of "let's give shareholders what they want".
- bayindirh 3y ago
  Since users are the ones who're financing Kagi, that phase will have no end until they become free and sell user data in a way.

xnx 3y ago

A lot of people on HN are very happy with Kagi, but I haven't seen examples of searches to understand where it is better. In a blind "taste test", I would be surprised if Kagi or Bing is preferred to Google for most searches.

bayindirh 3y ago
Well, all my daily searches, whether it be technical or daily mundane things return better results with less cruft than Google. Also, it notifies you if a page has excessive number of trackers. Combine it with personal website ranking and lenses, it surpasses Google easily. Also since it has no ads, there’s no noise. I don’t use Microsoft products, so I can’t comment on Bing.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
I did side by side for a while and Kagi was consistently superior to Google and bing. I think it boils down to they don’t try to cross sell advertisements so they’re more oriented towards actually providing better results rather than better paying results.
dharmab 3y ago
Kagi's killer feature can't be blind tested, because Google and Bing don't have it. The ability to pin, raise or block sites in your results is a game changer.
- nostrademons 3y ago
  Interestingly, Google had that in 2008 (SearchWiki), but it got extremely low usage - enough that at a time when Google was serving 30K QPS, you could read the queries with SearchWiki interaction as they came in on a screen. I suspect this is a niche feature for power-users only. HN is filled with power users, so they love Kagi, but it doesn't necessarily translate to the masses.
  - dharmab 3y ago
    2008 didn't have Pinterest, fewer listicles, conspiracy websites were less mainstream, and mobile web was in its toddler phase.