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Every time I see these posts about Kagi I wonder why you would not just use DuckDuckGo. Its free, the results are about the same and it has better filters for b

Every time I see these posts about Kagi I wonder why you would not just use DuckDuckGo. Its free, the results are about the same and it has better filters for blocking AI spam.

x187463 1y ago
Per the post, DuckDuckGo uses Bing's index and lacks the customization offered by Kagi.
dabbz 1y ago
My decision to move away from DDG was when they blocked a website due to Bing blocking it. The block was inadvertent. But it showed the flaw in relying on an external provider for all your results. You're just using Bing with a different UI. Kagi having their own index (plus being enhanced by several others), was a huge selling point for me initially. Truly separated from a reliance on big-tech and their whims.
- tredre3 1y ago
  Kagi results are entirely sourced from other indexes (mainly google and yandex), their own index (Teclis) is small and insufficient. I guess you fell for the marketing. DDG also claims to have its own index btw, but as you've noticed it's the same situation. It's basically useless and 99% of the results are straight from Bing. The only smaller search engine with its own real index is Brave.
  - dabbz 1y ago
    Sure, their index plays a small part of the equation, but they aren't reliant on any 1 index for their resultset. But sure, I guess their marketing worked. The index was why I looked elsewhere. The reason I switched to Kagi was because of their business model where I'm a customer not a product. So results are theoretically tailored for value to me not value to the company.
Marsymars 1y ago
I used DDG until I subbed to Kagi. The price of Kagi is worth either one of the ad-free experience and the better search results I get. (i.e. if Kagi didn't exist I'd be willing to pay for an ad-free DDG.)
carlosjobim 1y ago
For non-English results, DDG and such alternatives are of very low quality, even compared to Google.
kalleboo 1y ago
When I used DDG, the results were worse than Google, and I kept going back to Google when I couldn't find something, always second-guessing the results. And it seems every time someone recommends DDG the first thing they point out is "you can just type !g to get google results!", so I assume this is still the case. With Kagi, the results are better than Google, and the first couple times I couldn't find something with Kagi and went back to Google, the Google results were even worse.

Every time I see these posts about Kagi I wonder why you would not just use DuckDuckGo. Its free, the results are about the same and it has better filters for blocking AI spam.

x187463 1y ago

Per the post, DuckDuckGo uses Bing's index and lacks the customization offered by Kagi.

dabbz 1y ago

My decision to move away from DDG was when they blocked a website due to Bing blocking it. The block was inadvertent. But it showed the flaw in relying on an external provider for all your results. You're just using Bing with a different UI. Kagi having their own index (plus being enhanced by several others), was a huge selling point for me initially. Truly separated from a reliance on big-tech and their whims.

tredre3 1y ago
Kagi results are entirely sourced from other indexes (mainly google and yandex), their own index (Teclis) is small and insufficient. I guess you fell for the marketing. DDG also claims to have its own index btw, but as you've noticed it's the same situation. It's basically useless and 99% of the results are straight from Bing. The only smaller search engine with its own real index is Brave.
- dabbz 1y ago
  Sure, their index plays a small part of the equation, but they aren't reliant on any 1 index for their resultset. But sure, I guess their marketing worked. The index was why I looked elsewhere. The reason I switched to Kagi was because of their business model where I'm a customer not a product. So results are theoretically tailored for value to me not value to the company.

Marsymars 1y ago

I used DDG until I subbed to Kagi. The price of Kagi is worth either one of the ad-free experience and the better search results I get. (i.e. if Kagi didn't exist I'd be willing to pay for an ad-free DDG.)

carlosjobim 1y ago

For non-English results, DDG and such alternatives are of very low quality, even compared to Google.

kalleboo 1y ago

When I used DDG, the results were worse than Google, and I kept going back to Google when I couldn't find something, always second-guessing the results. And it seems every time someone recommends DDG the first thing they point out is "you can just type !g to get google results!", so I assume this is still the case. With Kagi, the results are better than Google, and the first couple times I couldn't find something with Kagi and went back to Google, the Google results were even worse.