3 ms·

I am still a user because Google is worse than ever, but I wish Kagi would stop interpreting my queries and randomly decide to ignore or assign a random weights

by sph 3y ago

I am still a user because Google is worse than ever, but I wish Kagi would stop interpreting my queries and randomly decide to ignore or assign a random weights to my words. If I search for `foo bar baz`, I want pages with `foo`, `bar` and `baz`, please. No, verbatim doesn't cut it because it somehow is far too strict and even common queries return half a dozen results at most. Google started sucking in the 2010s when they decided they know better than me, and the more Kagi improves, the more they follow down Google's path of trying to be outsmart me, and falling short. I just want a 2003 Google experience. A computer is not smarter than me, stop trying to interpret and make assumptions. --- Aside, is it so hard to make a search engine with a query interface like any trigram-based SQL full-text engine? With quotes, AND, OR and -word. I still believe any AI-powered solution of the past 20 years to be a mockery of this gold standard of precision and simplicity, except maybe Google 1.0.

__alexs 3y ago
> I just want a 2003 Google experience. Google in 2003 was good because the web wasn't quite so full of utter garbage. There must be 100x more content at least now.
- dspillett 3y ago
  That is only going to get worse, with the direct copies of StackOverflow and other popular sites (which are easy enough for search engines to filter out because the body content is practically identical) that exist only to fool less careful clickers into getting their adverts & such, being joined by a multitude of LLM generated rewordings of the same which will be harder to automatically drop (or de-prioritise).
  - nusl 3y ago
    I’ve used browser addons to help with filtering the search spam too. I think uBlacklist? It has lists of sites that are often helpful
- eitland 3y ago
  Everyone says this. But Kagi often being as good as Google used to be proves this isn't the only reason. Lately I have felt Kagi also sometimes stray down this "knows better than me what I want" path. I recommend using the forums to let them know. They actually read the forums and act on it. I've reported both ux improvements and search quality issues and more and they have always taken it seriously.

by sph 3y ago

__alexs 3y ago

> I just want a 2003 Google experience. Google in 2003 was good because the web wasn't quite so full of utter garbage. There must be 100x more content at least now.

dspillett 3y ago
That is only going to get worse, with the direct copies of StackOverflow and other popular sites (which are easy enough for search engines to filter out because the body content is practically identical) that exist only to fool less careful clickers into getting their adverts & such, being joined by a multitude of LLM generated rewordings of the same which will be harder to automatically drop (or de-prioritise).
- nusl 3y ago
  I’ve used browser addons to help with filtering the search spam too. I think uBlacklist? It has lists of sites that are often helpful
eitland 3y ago
Everyone says this. But Kagi often being as good as Google used to be proves this isn't the only reason. Lately I have felt Kagi also sometimes stray down this "knows better than me what I want" path. I recommend using the forums to let them know. They actually read the forums and act on it. I've reported both ux improvements and search quality issues and more and they have always taken it seriously.