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The best way to improve Google search results is to stop and use Kagi[0]. Seriously. If you are reading this article and these comments then you must be somewha

The best way to improve Google search results is to stop and use Kagi[0]. Seriously. If you are reading this article and these comments then you must be somewhat interested in search results. Do yourself (and the search world) a favor and subscribe. [0]https://kagi.com https://kagi.com

ajhurliman 3y ago
Kagi is head and shoulder better at finding things that are useful. Google is going the way of AOL.
- amf12 3y ago
  How do they plan to monetize it? How many people will pay for Search? Will they have an ad-supported version? If so how would their direction be any different when they face the same problems?
  - ajhurliman 3y ago
    It’s a monthly subscription that apparently a lot of people are willing to pay for, feels like an honest business which is shocking in tech.
    - aurareturn 3y ago
      We don't know if they're profitable doing this. One day, they might go kaput as well.
      - Moldoteck 3y ago
        at least they said they are
      - al_borland 3y ago
        In the early days a user could go into their setting, see the cost per search, and the total cost of their use per month, compared to what they paid. I threw some extra money their way when I was my use exceeded what I paid. But that was before they changed up their pricing structure.
    - amf12 3y ago
      How much is "a lot"? The HN bubble doesn't count.
      - SushiHippie 3y ago
        Nearly 24k paying users and ~400k searches per day https://kagi.com/stats https://kagi.com/stats
      - ajhurliman 3y ago
        >20,000 https://blog.kagi.com/celebrating-20k https://blog.kagi.com/celebrating-20k
friendlynokill 3y ago
This comment convinced me to subscribe to Kagi. I've been hearing so much about Kagi on HN that it's time to see what all the hubbub is about.
- andrewinardeer 3y ago
  If you end a sentence with a question mark an LLM will attempt to answer your question. It's great.
aaomidi 3y ago
There is so much Kagi references on HN that I’m slowly beginning to feel sus about it. I’m not saying this is happening (I’m not saying anyone is a shill). It’s just making me feel a little “hmm” about it.
- itsdrewmiller 3y ago
  It's not just hacker news! They were up in arms about some actual analysis of search quality here: https://danluu.com/seo-spam/ https://danluu.com/seo-spam/ Another common response is >Your table is wrong. I tried these queries on Kagi and got Good results for the queries [but phrase much more strongly] I'm not sure why people feel so strongly about Kagi but, all of these kinds of responses so far have come from Kagi users. No one has gotten good results for the tire, transistor, or snow queries (note, again, that this is not a query looking for a daily forecast, as clearly implied by the "winter 2023" in the query), nor are the results for the other queries very good if you don't have an ad blocker. I suppose it's possible that the next person who tells me this actually has good results, but that seems fairly unlikely given the zero percent correctness rate so far. For example, one user claimed that the results were all good, but they pinned GitHub results and only ran the queries for which you'd get a good result on GitHub. This is actually worse than you get if you use Google or Bing and write good queries since you'll get noise in your results when GitHub is the wrong place to search. Of course you make a similar claim that Bing is amazing is you write non-naive queries, so it's curious that so many Kagi users are angrily writing me about this and no Google or Bing users. Kagi appears to have tapped into the same vein that Tesla and Apple have managed to tap into, where users become incensed that someone is criticizing something they love and then write nonsensical defenses of their favorite product, which bodes well for Kagi. I've gotten comments like this from not just one Kagi user, but many.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    I'm not really a fan of this person's dismissive attitude, they're trying to avoid dealing with domain rank adjustments, understandably so the results are comparable, but the adjustments are part of the value add. The testing methodology is also odd, looking specifically for yt-dlp when asking for "download youtube video", when the web based downloaders that most of the big engines turn up on top make more sense for the average user, both due to not having to install a command line tool and due to not necessarily being on a device the tool can be installed on. I've often used the top Kagi result, and it has worked fine, yet has been labeled as scammy by the evaluator. IIRC that site also ranks high in Google's results. For adblock they expect specifically ublock origin, and consider ABP to not count despite it also being a very popular blocker. Them complaining about why it's only Kagi users reaching out to him also seems unnecessarily aggressive, eg I've found their article through you, in the context of Kagi, so if I were to comment, it'd obviously be in that context. However, how likely is this article to be brought up in the context of Bing, Google, ChatGPT or DDG, where there are many more carefully thought out and less dismissive comparisons and discussions out there?
frizlab 3y ago
I’ve subscribed just yesterday. Cannot be happier.
beej71 3y ago
I trust the non-ad-based company that I'm paying for quality results more than Google, that's for sure. Edit: but I'm glad Google is noticing their results are getting to be shit.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
stevage 3y ago
I finally took this advice a couple of weeks ago. It's been great. Zero regrets.
Nullabillity 3y ago
I prefer not having my full search history linked to my personal info and payment details, but that's just me.
- iamthepieman 3y ago
  The privacy, spam, signal to noise, and user experience equation is different for everyone. For me it's a good tradeoff since they (say) don't store your history and the ad profile Google builds on you is probably more damaging to your privacy than a photo of the entire contents of your wallet.
  - Nullabillity 3y ago
    > they (say) don't store your history They don't show your history. > the ad profile Google builds on you is probably more damaging to your privacy than a photo of the entire contents of your wallet. I can take measures to prevent Google from linking together a full profile. It sucks that it's necessary, but once you log in it's effectively game over. And your payment info has enough stable identifiers that it's trivial to link you to pretty much anything else you've paid for. --- The core misconception here seems to be the idea that there is such a thing as a honest for-profit corporation.
    - iamthepieman 3y ago
      That's why I said it's an equation, a balance, if you will. Sounds like you are all the way over on one side. We need the Stallman's of the world but most people are not that committed to a single issue. > The core misconception here seems to be the idea that there is such a thing as a honest for-profit corporation. And I would say there's degrees. Even if all companies eventually slouch into a google-like organization, at least you can jump on the bandwagon until that happens and find another when it does. And maybe none of the wagons are headed to a strict privacy, user controlled data, and free-software utopia, but maybe not all of them are headed to Gomorrah.
    - TheCoelacanth 3y ago
      Kagi explicitly promises not to store your history[1] and then takes your money based on that promise. If they do store your history, then they are committing fraud on a grand scale. [1] https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy

ajhurliman 3y ago

Kagi is head and shoulder better at finding things that are useful. Google is going the way of AOL.

amf12 3y ago
How do they plan to monetize it? How many people will pay for Search? Will they have an ad-supported version? If so how would their direction be any different when they face the same problems?
- ajhurliman 3y ago
  It’s a monthly subscription that apparently a lot of people are willing to pay for, feels like an honest business which is shocking in tech.
  - aurareturn 3y ago
    We don't know if they're profitable doing this. One day, they might go kaput as well.
    - Moldoteck 3y ago
      at least they said they are
    - al_borland 3y ago
      In the early days a user could go into their setting, see the cost per search, and the total cost of their use per month, compared to what they paid. I threw some extra money their way when I was my use exceeded what I paid. But that was before they changed up their pricing structure.
  - amf12 3y ago
    How much is "a lot"? The HN bubble doesn't count.
    - SushiHippie 3y ago
      Nearly 24k paying users and ~400k searches per day https://kagi.com/stats https://kagi.com/stats
    - ajhurliman 3y ago
      >20,000 https://blog.kagi.com/celebrating-20k https://blog.kagi.com/celebrating-20k

friendlynokill 3y ago

This comment convinced me to subscribe to Kagi. I've been hearing so much about Kagi on HN that it's time to see what all the hubbub is about.

andrewinardeer 3y ago
If you end a sentence with a question mark an LLM will attempt to answer your question. It's great.

aaomidi 3y ago

There is so much Kagi references on HN that I’m slowly beginning to feel sus about it. I’m not saying this is happening (I’m not saying anyone is a shill). It’s just making me feel a little “hmm” about it.

itsdrewmiller 3y ago
It's not just hacker news! They were up in arms about some actual analysis of search quality here: https://danluu.com/seo-spam/ https://danluu.com/seo-spam/ Another common response is >Your table is wrong. I tried these queries on Kagi and got Good results for the queries [but phrase much more strongly] I'm not sure why people feel so strongly about Kagi but, all of these kinds of responses so far have come from Kagi users. No one has gotten good results for the tire, transistor, or snow queries (note, again, that this is not a query looking for a daily forecast, as clearly implied by the "winter 2023" in the query), nor are the results for the other queries very good if you don't have an ad blocker. I suppose it's possible that the next person who tells me this actually has good results, but that seems fairly unlikely given the zero percent correctness rate so far. For example, one user claimed that the results were all good, but they pinned GitHub results and only ran the queries for which you'd get a good result on GitHub. This is actually worse than you get if you use Google or Bing and write good queries since you'll get noise in your results when GitHub is the wrong place to search. Of course you make a similar claim that Bing is amazing is you write non-naive queries, so it's curious that so many Kagi users are angrily writing me about this and no Google or Bing users. Kagi appears to have tapped into the same vein that Tesla and Apple have managed to tap into, where users become incensed that someone is criticizing something they love and then write nonsensical defenses of their favorite product, which bodes well for Kagi. I've gotten comments like this from not just one Kagi user, but many.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  I'm not really a fan of this person's dismissive attitude, they're trying to avoid dealing with domain rank adjustments, understandably so the results are comparable, but the adjustments are part of the value add. The testing methodology is also odd, looking specifically for yt-dlp when asking for "download youtube video", when the web based downloaders that most of the big engines turn up on top make more sense for the average user, both due to not having to install a command line tool and due to not necessarily being on a device the tool can be installed on. I've often used the top Kagi result, and it has worked fine, yet has been labeled as scammy by the evaluator. IIRC that site also ranks high in Google's results. For adblock they expect specifically ublock origin, and consider ABP to not count despite it also being a very popular blocker. Them complaining about why it's only Kagi users reaching out to him also seems unnecessarily aggressive, eg I've found their article through you, in the context of Kagi, so if I were to comment, it'd obviously be in that context. However, how likely is this article to be brought up in the context of Bing, Google, ChatGPT or DDG, where there are many more carefully thought out and less dismissive comparisons and discussions out there?

frizlab 3y ago

I’ve subscribed just yesterday. Cannot be happier.

beej71 3y ago

I trust the non-ad-based company that I'm paying for quality results more than Google, that's for sure. Edit: but I'm glad Google is noticing their results are getting to be shit.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

stevage 3y ago

I finally took this advice a couple of weeks ago. It's been great. Zero regrets.

Nullabillity 3y ago

I prefer not having my full search history linked to my personal info and payment details, but that's just me.

iamthepieman 3y ago
The privacy, spam, signal to noise, and user experience equation is different for everyone. For me it's a good tradeoff since they (say) don't store your history and the ad profile Google builds on you is probably more damaging to your privacy than a photo of the entire contents of your wallet.
- Nullabillity 3y ago
  > they (say) don't store your history They don't show your history. > the ad profile Google builds on you is probably more damaging to your privacy than a photo of the entire contents of your wallet. I can take measures to prevent Google from linking together a full profile. It sucks that it's necessary, but once you log in it's effectively game over. And your payment info has enough stable identifiers that it's trivial to link you to pretty much anything else you've paid for. --- The core misconception here seems to be the idea that there is such a thing as a honest for-profit corporation.
  - iamthepieman 3y ago
    That's why I said it's an equation, a balance, if you will. Sounds like you are all the way over on one side. We need the Stallman's of the world but most people are not that committed to a single issue. > The core misconception here seems to be the idea that there is such a thing as a honest for-profit corporation. And I would say there's degrees. Even if all companies eventually slouch into a google-like organization, at least you can jump on the bandwagon until that happens and find another when it does. And maybe none of the wagons are headed to a strict privacy, user controlled data, and free-software utopia, but maybe not all of them are headed to Gomorrah.
  - TheCoelacanth 3y ago
    Kagi explicitly promises not to store your history[1] and then takes your money based on that promise. If they do store your history, then they are committing fraud on a grand scale. [1] https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy