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Kagi is great because SEO cargo cult haven’t caught up yet. Once Kagi gains traction I guarantee result quality will nosedive.

bastawhiz 2y ago
The magic is in letting real humans curate what gets boosted and what doesn't. My results tend to be quite good because I've hidden tons of sites that I don't care about. It's the same reason uBlock works: filter lists can be shared.
EZ-E 2y ago
> Kagi is great because SEO cargo cult haven’t caught up yet This seems like a hard problem to solve, the incentive to be top ranked is just so high. What could be the solution? Can AI even help? Do we need to go back to manual curation after all? I remember in the 90s there were manually curated lists of websites, something like a website directory. At this point I'd rather get recommended a list of websites from a reddit user than relying on Google's ranking.
- joe_the_user 2y ago
  I don't think SEO actually beat Google. Rather, Google simply capitulated or was captured. I distinctly remember a 2019 update where things really went bad. Part of the situation is that a company that relies on ad revenue will get gradually feel the pull of the advertisers more and more. I'd be more worried about someone nefarious buying Kagi if it got big. Someone else would be willing to pay a whole lot of money for those eyeballs.
  - dannyw 2y ago
    SEO spam is correlated with ads. Google dominates web advertising. Google’s interests are aligned with SEO spammers, as long as it’s not so terrible you switch to another search engine or stop searching.
- interroboink 2y ago
  > a hard problem to solve Indeed. And perhaps part of the issue is that there is not a single solution. Even manual curation is ultimately based on trust. If someone's trusted list of recommendations gets popular enough, what's to stop them from "selling out," breaking that trust, to make money? Also, the good curated stuff is typically correspondingly small and focused. But lots of people want broad results in their searches, and it's hard to imagine a person or handful of people being able to cater to all of those varying needs equally well. Sometimes a person wants excellent narrow results (eg: academic looking for papers), other times they want broad shallow stuff, and at various other points want various other things in between. There's a whole field of expertise, sometimes called "Library and Information Science" about organizing and making information findable, since long before computers existed. Even for them it is not a solved problem. But the cat-and-mouse arms race that the online version has turned into makes libraries and asking a librarian for recommendations feel a lot more appealing (:
- hulitu 2y ago
  > the incentive to be top ranked is just so high. What could be the solution? To not be top ranked ? /s
mjr00 2y ago
Maybe, but one major problem with Google search is the perverse incentives. SEO garbage sites tend to be filled with Google advertisements, which means a Google search user who clicks through to a SEO site makes Google money. As long as the result is good enough, users still get what they need and the search is successful. And by good enough, I'm talking about sites like "geeksforgeeks", "towarddatascience" or "realpython" that just put additional text and ads around existing documentation; they do answer your search query, you just have to scroll and ignore the 20 ads on the page to get to it. It's to Google's benefit to offer one of these pages up over, say, python.org as the top result. Kagi, at least for now, is making its USP the fact that it surfaces more professional, curated results. Its algorithm is susceptible to manipulation, for sure, but unlike Google, it actually has an incentive to keep SEO garbage off the first page of results.
nurettin 2y ago
If kagi ranks according to pages that provide high value relevant information about the subject, how would SEO work around that? If they are willing to provide quality content, I guess they deserve to top the search?
benhurmarcel 2y ago
Being paid, I don't think Kagi will ever "gain traction" in this way. Which is great for its users.
- pxtail 2y ago
  With being paid it's golden target for various "influencers" because it's users already did auto segmentation and assigned themselves to group of very wealthy individuals and ones eager to pay for internet services.
p3rls 2y ago
What? My niche is already dominated by the same SEO spammers as Google on Kagi and always has been. Kagi just takes google results... I swear some of you guys it's like we're not even using the same software.
- freediver 2y ago
  Care enough to give an example or report to kagifeedback.org so we can check what is going on?
  - p3rls 2y ago
    Sure, my niche is entertainment, so let's search anything in the international music scene and check out the rank orderings... Lo and behold it is exactly the same as Google pagerank.
    - freediver 2y ago
      How about an exact example so that we are on the same page? Thanks.
      - p3rls 2y ago
        Sure, I'll give you a recent example that I'm #1 in on both Google and Kagi: 2NE1 ages I can go through this list and see you are exactly the same, except you leave up more spam. Just one example of thousands I've looked at.
        freediver 2y ago
        Did I misunderstand you when you said Kagi results are same as Google results and you really meant that just result #1 happens to match? For your query I can see there is a difference already at result #2, #3 etc.. Also if you believe this is wrong you should submit search quality feedback to kagifeedback.org We get a lot of feedback but it is mostly for technical queries that we usually address: https://kagifeedback.org/t/search-quality https://kagifeedback.org/t/search-quality If you provide details what went wrong in kagi results for this query (and what sites should rank #1, #2... in your opinion) we can take a look. With search quality because it is such a broad space, what does not get reported, does not get looked at and addressed.

bastawhiz 2y ago

The magic is in letting real humans curate what gets boosted and what doesn't. My results tend to be quite good because I've hidden tons of sites that I don't care about. It's the same reason uBlock works: filter lists can be shared.

EZ-E 2y ago

> Kagi is great because SEO cargo cult haven’t caught up yet This seems like a hard problem to solve, the incentive to be top ranked is just so high. What could be the solution? Can AI even help? Do we need to go back to manual curation after all? I remember in the 90s there were manually curated lists of websites, something like a website directory. At this point I'd rather get recommended a list of websites from a reddit user than relying on Google's ranking.

joe_the_user 2y ago
I don't think SEO actually beat Google. Rather, Google simply capitulated or was captured. I distinctly remember a 2019 update where things really went bad. Part of the situation is that a company that relies on ad revenue will get gradually feel the pull of the advertisers more and more. I'd be more worried about someone nefarious buying Kagi if it got big. Someone else would be willing to pay a whole lot of money for those eyeballs.
- dannyw 2y ago
  SEO spam is correlated with ads. Google dominates web advertising. Google’s interests are aligned with SEO spammers, as long as it’s not so terrible you switch to another search engine or stop searching.
interroboink 2y ago
> a hard problem to solve Indeed. And perhaps part of the issue is that there is not a single solution. Even manual curation is ultimately based on trust. If someone's trusted list of recommendations gets popular enough, what's to stop them from "selling out," breaking that trust, to make money? Also, the good curated stuff is typically correspondingly small and focused. But lots of people want broad results in their searches, and it's hard to imagine a person or handful of people being able to cater to all of those varying needs equally well. Sometimes a person wants excellent narrow results (eg: academic looking for papers), other times they want broad shallow stuff, and at various other points want various other things in between. There's a whole field of expertise, sometimes called "Library and Information Science" about organizing and making information findable, since long before computers existed. Even for them it is not a solved problem. But the cat-and-mouse arms race that the online version has turned into makes libraries and asking a librarian for recommendations feel a lot more appealing (:
hulitu 2y ago
> the incentive to be top ranked is just so high. What could be the solution? To not be top ranked ? /s

mjr00 2y ago

Maybe, but one major problem with Google search is the perverse incentives. SEO garbage sites tend to be filled with Google advertisements, which means a Google search user who clicks through to a SEO site makes Google money. As long as the result is good enough, users still get what they need and the search is successful. And by good enough, I'm talking about sites like "geeksforgeeks", "towarddatascience" or "realpython" that just put additional text and ads around existing documentation; they do answer your search query, you just have to scroll and ignore the 20 ads on the page to get to it. It's to Google's benefit to offer one of these pages up over, say, python.org as the top result. Kagi, at least for now, is making its USP the fact that it surfaces more professional, curated results. Its algorithm is susceptible to manipulation, for sure, but unlike Google, it actually has an incentive to keep SEO garbage off the first page of results.

nurettin 2y ago

If kagi ranks according to pages that provide high value relevant information about the subject, how would SEO work around that? If they are willing to provide quality content, I guess they deserve to top the search?

benhurmarcel 2y ago

Being paid, I don't think Kagi will ever "gain traction" in this way. Which is great for its users.

pxtail 2y ago
With being paid it's golden target for various "influencers" because it's users already did auto segmentation and assigned themselves to group of very wealthy individuals and ones eager to pay for internet services.

p3rls 2y ago

What? My niche is already dominated by the same SEO spammers as Google on Kagi and always has been. Kagi just takes google results... I swear some of you guys it's like we're not even using the same software.

freediver 2y ago
Care enough to give an example or report to kagifeedback.org so we can check what is going on?
- p3rls 2y ago
  Sure, my niche is entertainment, so let's search anything in the international music scene and check out the rank orderings... Lo and behold it is exactly the same as Google pagerank.
  - freediver 2y ago
    How about an exact example so that we are on the same page? Thanks.
    - p3rls 2y ago
      Sure, I'll give you a recent example that I'm #1 in on both Google and Kagi: 2NE1 ages I can go through this list and see you are exactly the same, except you leave up more spam. Just one example of thousands I've looked at.
      - freediver 2y ago
        Did I misunderstand you when you said Kagi results are same as Google results and you really meant that just result #1 happens to match? For your query I can see there is a difference already at result #2, #3 etc.. Also if you believe this is wrong you should submit search quality feedback to kagifeedback.org We get a lot of feedback but it is mostly for technical queries that we usually address: https://kagifeedback.org/t/search-quality https://kagifeedback.org/t/search-quality If you provide details what went wrong in kagi results for this query (and what sites should rank #1, #2... in your opinion) we can take a look. With search quality because it is such a broad space, what does not get reported, does not get looked at and addressed.