7 ms·

I switched to them a few months ago, I was previously using duckduckgo (and Google before that). As most of you have probably noticed Google search results have

by cwsx 3y ago

I switched to them a few months ago, I was previously using duckduckgo (and Google before that). As most of you have probably noticed Google search results have seriously dropped in quality the last few years, but especially in 2023. I'm no longer able to get meaningful results for almost any topic, especially if it's technical, the only results are AI generated (?) / obvious SEO spam websites. It takes me multiple different search terms and clicking through multiple results to find anything semi relevant, and even then it's a shallow article maybe summarising what I'm looking for. Unfortunately DDG seems to be going the same way. Whereas Kagi reminds me of the 'old' google search. The results are meaningful and relevant, not diluted with pages of generic article results. They also offer a lot of great customisation options like being able to block or boost certain sites in results. They have some built in lists for common filler sites. I can't comment on the AI variation but I hear that's progressing well. I wouldn't call myself a power user of Kagi, but even then I'm getting far better results than other search engines, definitely worth the price per month. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, just thought I'd share my anecdotal experience.

LargeTomato 3y ago
I just signed up. You get 100 searches for free to try it out.
- hunter-gatherer 3y ago
  I did that a couple months ago, and just signed up for a paid tier after I tried to go back to duckduckgo and started losing my mind. Kagi is better for discovering new content and mediocre places on the internet.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Small warning. If you click the "more" button at the bottom of a list of results, it silently does another search and deducts that from your remaining free searches.
solarkraft 3y ago
Does it have an option to exclude commercial websites? That'd be quite useful to me. Pretty much every time I try to find information about a product, all I find are sites trying to sell it to me (but I already have it and want to find information about it, damn it!).
- lucasban 3y ago
  There is a lens available in settings that seems like a good fit, though I haven’t tried it myself yet. Small Web: results that favor noncommercial domains and topics.
- unshavedyak 3y ago
  Iirc there is an exclude (or at the very least, weights), though you'd have to do it by hand. Though i do think there is a social feature to install other peoples weights.
- layoric 3y ago
  Another Kagi user here, yes, the customization of results is way better than any other search engine I've used. Eg, personalization can be manually set to lower or raise weight of results from specific domains. This has become extremely useful to not only filter out bad sites, but increase relevant results when you regularly get information from sites like GitHub etc. Stats are released about these as well so you can easily copy heavy used fiters [0]. [0] https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard
  - greenmartian 3y ago
    Interesting that HN is pinned way more than stackoverflow.
    - diggan 3y ago
      If they do/done a user survey, it would be interesting to see where all paying users are coming from. My guess is that a substantial amount of users come from hearing about Kagi on HN or in HN comments.
anon-3988 3y ago
> I wouldn't call myself a power user of Kagi, but even then I'm getting far better results than other search engines, definitely worth the price per month. This only works as long as Kagi is a niche. The moment any search engine becomes commonplace I think they will inevitably succumb to SEO. Otherwise, they would have to change their methodologies every once in a while to completely flip the ecosystem.
- calvinmorrison 3y ago
  SEO should be called "GEO", it's google optimization. Spam keyword blogsites only work because google prioritizes that stuff. They're driven by ad revenue so they're incentivized to show commerical sites over non commercial ones, etc. ,etc, etc.,etc.
  - munksbeer 3y ago
    Except that the problem isn't specific to google search. The others are much the same.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tomrod 3y ago
  Two-sided/platform market dynamics are really interesting to this economist. I wonder if kagi's going to have to charge for listings some day, instead of users paying in, if they intend to grow substantially.
- viraptor 3y ago
  Not necessarily. You'll still be able to nuke the whole domain from your results, permanently. That means you'll see the spam once, and getting a new domain promoted to the top takes time and effectively money. I also hope that domains which get blocked by lots of people will get reviewed for global downranking, but I don't think that's happening yet?
  - anon-3988 3y ago
nine_k 3y ago
Google Search is a victim of its own success. They are the biggest search engine; every SEO trick, every spam attack is spearheaded against them. But also being the biggest and the inevitable, they can afford to blunt their search tool somehow in order to show more lucrative sort-of-hits and sell more ads. A moral hazard to do such a thing is always present fr any market-dominating player. Kagi, in comparison, is tiny, and almost nobody cares to attack their algorithms. Back in 1990s, when Macs were a small minority in the PC-dominated world, they were the safest desktop machines, because almost nobody cared to write malware for them. Now that Macs are a sizable segment of computers in hands of important people, they are targeted by malware all right.
- viraptor 3y ago
  > every SEO trick, every spam attack is spearheaded against them. Sure, but also they're ignoring extremely basic issues. "every SEO trick" is one thing, "just copy the SO content and still get ranked on the first page" is them not caring. We can worry about them dealing with the complex issues after they address the low hanging fruit.
irfn 3y ago
The question to about the obvious quality drop for Google is, Is this intentional? Perhaps some cost saving or ROI measures? Or the motive always was to just train their AI and we just helped with that?
- tempest_ 3y ago
  Just perverse incentives. Google isn't incentivized to be a good search engine. They are incentivized to be just good enough that you don't go elsewhere while increasing the number of ads / paid results.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
I've been curious for a while too and I've been trying to de-google myself a tiny bit each year (more or less dropped Chrome in 2023). Once I actually grab a full time job again I wouldn't mind grabbing my own subscription here to try it out. I'm curious if 300 searches/month is truly enough for me, though. And what would happen if I go over that rate. Am I simply unable to search more for that month?
- spondyl 3y ago
  Yeah, once you hit the free limit, you get served a subscription wall once you try to do a search
- licebmi__at__ 3y ago
  Fwiw, I initially burned through the free searches in a few days, so definitely not enough IMO. Add the fact that free searches never got refreshed for my account, and I was pretty much unable to properly test the service for months. But bangs still work after the limit, thus I kept it as default given that I heavily use bangs to search other services. Still I ended up subscribing, and after properly testing, I can recommend. The service is good, the blacklist feature is essential to me now; is just that the free tier is shit.
  - benhurmarcel 3y ago
    The free searches aren't supposed to "refresh". They are once per account.
- benhurmarcel 3y ago
  Personally I'm fine with the 300 searches/month, however that means I don't use Kagi for searches that are extremely simple.
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    I just prefix "simple" searches with !g or !gi, bangs don't count against the limit

by cwsx 3y ago

LargeTomato 3y ago

I just signed up. You get 100 searches for free to try it out.

hunter-gatherer 3y ago
I did that a couple months ago, and just signed up for a paid tier after I tried to go back to duckduckgo and started losing my mind. Kagi is better for discovering new content and mediocre places on the internet.
justinclift 3y ago
Small warning. If you click the "more" button at the bottom of a list of results, it silently does another search and deducts that from your remaining free searches.

solarkraft 3y ago

Does it have an option to exclude commercial websites? That'd be quite useful to me. Pretty much every time I try to find information about a product, all I find are sites trying to sell it to me (but I already have it and want to find information about it, damn it!).

lucasban 3y ago
There is a lens available in settings that seems like a good fit, though I haven’t tried it myself yet. Small Web: results that favor noncommercial domains and topics.
unshavedyak 3y ago
Iirc there is an exclude (or at the very least, weights), though you'd have to do it by hand. Though i do think there is a social feature to install other peoples weights.
layoric 3y ago
Another Kagi user here, yes, the customization of results is way better than any other search engine I've used. Eg, personalization can be manually set to lower or raise weight of results from specific domains. This has become extremely useful to not only filter out bad sites, but increase relevant results when you regularly get information from sites like GitHub etc. Stats are released about these as well so you can easily copy heavy used fiters [0]. [0] https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard
- greenmartian 3y ago
  Interesting that HN is pinned way more than stackoverflow.
  - diggan 3y ago
    If they do/done a user survey, it would be interesting to see where all paying users are coming from. My guess is that a substantial amount of users come from hearing about Kagi on HN or in HN comments.

anon-3988 3y ago

> I wouldn't call myself a power user of Kagi, but even then I'm getting far better results than other search engines, definitely worth the price per month. This only works as long as Kagi is a niche. The moment any search engine becomes commonplace I think they will inevitably succumb to SEO. Otherwise, they would have to change their methodologies every once in a while to completely flip the ecosystem.

calvinmorrison 3y ago
SEO should be called "GEO", it's google optimization. Spam keyword blogsites only work because google prioritizes that stuff. They're driven by ad revenue so they're incentivized to show commerical sites over non commercial ones, etc. ,etc, etc.,etc.
- munksbeer 3y ago
  Except that the problem isn't specific to google search. The others are much the same.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tomrod 3y ago
Two-sided/platform market dynamics are really interesting to this economist. I wonder if kagi's going to have to charge for listings some day, instead of users paying in, if they intend to grow substantially.
viraptor 3y ago
Not necessarily. You'll still be able to nuke the whole domain from your results, permanently. That means you'll see the spam once, and getting a new domain promoted to the top takes time and effectively money. I also hope that domains which get blocked by lots of people will get reviewed for global downranking, but I don't think that's happening yet?
- anon-3988 3y ago

nine_k 3y ago

Google Search is a victim of its own success. They are the biggest search engine; every SEO trick, every spam attack is spearheaded against them. But also being the biggest and the inevitable, they can afford to blunt their search tool somehow in order to show more lucrative sort-of-hits and sell more ads. A moral hazard to do such a thing is always present fr any market-dominating player. Kagi, in comparison, is tiny, and almost nobody cares to attack their algorithms. Back in 1990s, when Macs were a small minority in the PC-dominated world, they were the safest desktop machines, because almost nobody cared to write malware for them. Now that Macs are a sizable segment of computers in hands of important people, they are targeted by malware all right.

viraptor 3y ago
> every SEO trick, every spam attack is spearheaded against them. Sure, but also they're ignoring extremely basic issues. "every SEO trick" is one thing, "just copy the SO content and still get ranked on the first page" is them not caring. We can worry about them dealing with the complex issues after they address the low hanging fruit.

irfn 3y ago

The question to about the obvious quality drop for Google is, Is this intentional? Perhaps some cost saving or ROI measures? Or the motive always was to just train their AI and we just helped with that?

tempest_ 3y ago
Just perverse incentives. Google isn't incentivized to be a good search engine. They are incentivized to be just good enough that you don't go elsewhere while increasing the number of ads / paid results.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

I've been curious for a while too and I've been trying to de-google myself a tiny bit each year (more or less dropped Chrome in 2023). Once I actually grab a full time job again I wouldn't mind grabbing my own subscription here to try it out. I'm curious if 300 searches/month is truly enough for me, though. And what would happen if I go over that rate. Am I simply unable to search more for that month?

spondyl 3y ago
Yeah, once you hit the free limit, you get served a subscription wall once you try to do a search
licebmi__at__ 3y ago
Fwiw, I initially burned through the free searches in a few days, so definitely not enough IMO. Add the fact that free searches never got refreshed for my account, and I was pretty much unable to properly test the service for months. But bangs still work after the limit, thus I kept it as default given that I heavily use bangs to search other services. Still I ended up subscribing, and after properly testing, I can recommend. The service is good, the blacklist feature is essential to me now; is just that the free tier is shit.
- benhurmarcel 3y ago
  The free searches aren't supposed to "refresh". They are once per account.
benhurmarcel 3y ago
Personally I'm fine with the 300 searches/month, however that means I don't use Kagi for searches that are extremely simple.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  I just prefix "simple" searches with !g or !gi, bangs don't count against the limit