3 ms·

Yep, I was incredibly skeptical about Kagi but I tried it and never looked back. Now my wife, friends, and several coworkers are customers. The chatgpt approac

Yep, I was incredibly skeptical about Kagi but I tried it and never looked back. Now my wife, friends, and several coworkers are customers. The chatgpt approach to search just feels forced and not as intuitive.

SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
Once Kagi implements location aware search that is actually useful I’ll be interested in Kagi. That’s what made me leave the engine besides loving it otherwise.
- lstamour 2y ago
  Google Maps is quite the moat. I suspect they'll need to find a way to license the data, e.g. via API. Apple has not (yet) been as successful at building out a database of local places with reliable hours of operations, reviews, etc.
  - pzmarzly 2y ago
    There already is an official Google Maps API, but it is already very expensive with prices rising from time to time. There is no other company (other than maybe Meta) that has this much POI data in the western world. So that is a solid advantage that Google is going to have, but the maps business alone wouldn't be able to keep it in the S&P list for long.
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
      Why not? I can see a future where Maps becomes the core of Google's business. It's already their strongest offering, together with YouTube. In every other field Google has been beaten.
- sbeckeriv 2y ago
  If you go to maps.kagi.com and in allow access to your location local results should be better. If it doesnt ask for access to your location there is a small icon on bottom right hand side that shows if it has access.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    That's great if I'm trying to find a location, but that's not what local results is about. Local results means that if I search for "driving laws", Google gives me .gov sites for my state as the top results, while Kagi's first page gives me results for 8 other states (including Alaska!) but not for my state. There are a lot of kinds of queries that benefit from knowing the user's location even though they aren't actually looking for a place that exists on a map. (I'm a happy paying Kagi user, but OP is right that this is its weakest point by far.)
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
      For what it’s worth DuckDuckGo is flawed in the exact same way. I ended up leaving DDG for the exact same reason years ago
      - TRiG_Ireland 2y ago
        The entire selling point of DDG is that its search results are not personalised. This is not a flaw.
        GeneralMayhem 2y ago
        Personalized != contextualized. You could have a search engine that uses geolocation without building any sort of cross-request profile on the individual making the search.
        lolinder 2y ago
        But OP is right that this would actually be serving their target demographic less well than serving everyone the same results regardless of context. The fact that the results don't know where the user is is reassuring for the kind of user who wants to use a privacy-oriented search engine, regardless of whether localized results could technically be provided in a privacy-preserving way.
- abhgh 2y ago
  Same here - I do a lot of location aware searches. When I left Kagi after trying it out for a while, I wrote a detailed feedback hoping it would be useful to the Kagi team.

SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago

Once Kagi implements location aware search that is actually useful I’ll be interested in Kagi. That’s what made me leave the engine besides loving it otherwise.

lstamour 2y ago
Google Maps is quite the moat. I suspect they'll need to find a way to license the data, e.g. via API. Apple has not (yet) been as successful at building out a database of local places with reliable hours of operations, reviews, etc.
- pzmarzly 2y ago
  There already is an official Google Maps API, but it is already very expensive with prices rising from time to time. There is no other company (other than maybe Meta) that has this much POI data in the western world. So that is a solid advantage that Google is going to have, but the maps business alone wouldn't be able to keep it in the S&P list for long.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    Why not? I can see a future where Maps becomes the core of Google's business. It's already their strongest offering, together with YouTube. In every other field Google has been beaten.
sbeckeriv 2y ago
If you go to maps.kagi.com and in allow access to your location local results should be better. If it doesnt ask for access to your location there is a small icon on bottom right hand side that shows if it has access.
- lolinder 2y ago
  That's great if I'm trying to find a location, but that's not what local results is about. Local results means that if I search for "driving laws", Google gives me .gov sites for my state as the top results, while Kagi's first page gives me results for 8 other states (including Alaska!) but not for my state. There are a lot of kinds of queries that benefit from knowing the user's location even though they aren't actually looking for a place that exists on a map. (I'm a happy paying Kagi user, but OP is right that this is its weakest point by far.)
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
    For what it’s worth DuckDuckGo is flawed in the exact same way. I ended up leaving DDG for the exact same reason years ago
    - TRiG_Ireland 2y ago
      The entire selling point of DDG is that its search results are not personalised. This is not a flaw.
      - GeneralMayhem 2y ago
        Personalized != contextualized. You could have a search engine that uses geolocation without building any sort of cross-request profile on the individual making the search.
        lolinder 2y ago
        But OP is right that this would actually be serving their target demographic less well than serving everyone the same results regardless of context. The fact that the results don't know where the user is is reassuring for the kind of user who wants to use a privacy-oriented search engine, regardless of whether localized results could technically be provided in a privacy-preserving way.
abhgh 2y ago
Same here - I do a lot of location aware searches. When I left Kagi after trying it out for a while, I wrote a detailed feedback hoping it would be useful to the Kagi team.