5 ms·

How is Kagi for non-US folks? I've tried switching to DDG a while back but the experience for me, living outside the US, was not great. Sure, programming relate

How is Kagi for non-US folks? I've tried switching to DDG a while back but the experience for me, living outside the US, was not great. Sure, programming related searches were pretty good, but everything else was not. Does Kagi have a better localized experience?

justinclift 1y ago
Seems fine here in Australia, though I tend to use global results.
- DimmieMan 1y ago
  Works fine in AU settings too. It's not as good as google at knowing where you are (gee I wonder why) but if I search Bahn Mi <my town> the results as good as google. Results for something niche like "Keycaps" are showing lots of local results too (or as local as you can get living outside a capital city in Australia).
decimalenough 1y ago
As a non-US-ian, yes, it does, for search. There's also a handy country dropdown if you ever want to localize to somewhere else, although I rarely need this, since it's smart enough to eg. show "tokyo hotels" even if your country is somewhere else. You'll still need Google Maps though.
hatthew 1y ago
Just curious, are you wondering about location-specific results ("best restaurants"), country-specific results ("how to do my taxes"), or language-specific results ("pasos de división larga")?
- jeltz 1y ago
  I mostly search in Swedish when searching for Swedish topics and DDG is usually awful for that.
- ares623 1y ago
  Yeah, location specific and country specific. Like if I'm looking for a product, I want results from local shops, not from eBay/Amazon/etc.
nmstoker 1y ago
I find Kagi pretty good - I'm UK based. I upgraded my phone a few days back and when search defaulted back to Google I realised how worthwhile my subscription is. It's not all perfect, for instance I would love to figure out how to stop all map searches sticking with them: sorry Google is just lightyears ahead there so I'd always prefer that. But generally they're about the right amount of customisability. The killer feature for me is being able to bury sites so you never ever get results from them ever again and to slightly bump up/down results for particular reasons (your own, not due to someone else paying an ad placement fee!)
- IneffablePigeon 1y ago
  Yeah I’ve just set any search starting with !m to redirect to google maps. It’s in the custom search settings somewhere. I also find Kagi good in the UK - it wasn’t amazing when I first subscribed but got a lot better quite fast. I do occasionally add “uk” to a search when shopping but I did that on Google too.
balder1991 1y ago
That’s my issue too, as a Brazilian. For anything more localized, Google is the only choice that has usable results. I leave DDG as my default engine and intentionally go to Google only when I need something that’s more “Brazilian context”.
Marsymars 1y ago
Might depend a bit on your desired experience. I find Google to be too aggressively localized, where (from Canada) I’ll search for (made up example) e.g. “Eiffel Tower” and instead of the results that I’d want to be #1 and #2 (wikipedia and toureiffel.paris), I’ll get (after a pile of ads) “JimBob’s Eiffel Towel Of French Fries”, “kid builds scale model of Eiffel Tower for local science fair” and some tour company offering Eiffel Tower tours.
GeneralMaximus 1y ago
> Does Kagi have a better localized experience? I'm in India and it works well. I can even search in Hindi and get good results. The only thing that doesn't work are local points of interests (restaurants, hotels, local businesses, etc). I still have to use Google Maps to look these up. Then again, even Apple doesn't have good local results for PoIs in India, so I don't expect Kagi to get this right either. That said, I often turn off localized results completely and just use the international results. Those tend to be more diverse and more useful, at least for the sort of searches I tend to do.
- benhurmarcel 1y ago
  I really like Kagi for this reason, the ability to choose whether I want "international" results or localized to a country (and choose the country, sometimes it's not mine). I agree that for very localized results (not at country level but city level), I still use Google instead.
Matumio 1y ago
I once had weird results with searching specifically in the Switzerland region, it didn't find an obviously Swiss site. IIRC it was solved it by switching back to international search. I'm using Kagi exclusively, and I don't remember having such trouble recently. Maybe they fixed it. I just did a quick test: local search for a specific law term. Kagi, Google and DDG all found the roughly same relevant sites in the top five. Each has a different top result. Google's and DDG's are a private law company. Kagi's first is an official government site. (With a suspicious non-government domain, so I had to check, but yes it's prominently linked from the main government site.)
maleldil 1y ago
Works very well in the UK. Local news, government websites, etc. You can easily change the country in the results page, which is useful for people who speak multiple languages. With DuckDuckGo, I sometimes had to resort to !g to use Google, but I haven't done that in Kagi for ages.
dakial1 1y ago
...and pricing.
martin82 1y ago
I'm in Singapore and Kagi is great. Been using it for a couple fo years now.
hojinkoh 1y ago
Native Asian, bouncing between Taiwan and Japan. Kagi works quite well for these two locales. Even for gov docs, medical docs, and for some rather obscure Taiwanese language things. Well, except for local shops and pois in Taiwan. Which is reasonable. Google map also sucks for less-populated Taiwanese areas. I kind of have to rely on my good old legs for that.

justinclift 1y ago

Seems fine here in Australia, though I tend to use global results.

DimmieMan 1y ago
Works fine in AU settings too. It's not as good as google at knowing where you are (gee I wonder why) but if I search Bahn Mi <my town> the results as good as google. Results for something niche like "Keycaps" are showing lots of local results too (or as local as you can get living outside a capital city in Australia).

decimalenough 1y ago

As a non-US-ian, yes, it does, for search. There's also a handy country dropdown if you ever want to localize to somewhere else, although I rarely need this, since it's smart enough to eg. show "tokyo hotels" even if your country is somewhere else. You'll still need Google Maps though.

hatthew 1y ago

Just curious, are you wondering about location-specific results ("best restaurants"), country-specific results ("how to do my taxes"), or language-specific results ("pasos de división larga")?

jeltz 1y ago
I mostly search in Swedish when searching for Swedish topics and DDG is usually awful for that.
ares623 1y ago
Yeah, location specific and country specific. Like if I'm looking for a product, I want results from local shops, not from eBay/Amazon/etc.

nmstoker 1y ago

I find Kagi pretty good - I'm UK based. I upgraded my phone a few days back and when search defaulted back to Google I realised how worthwhile my subscription is. It's not all perfect, for instance I would love to figure out how to stop all map searches sticking with them: sorry Google is just lightyears ahead there so I'd always prefer that. But generally they're about the right amount of customisability. The killer feature for me is being able to bury sites so you never ever get results from them ever again and to slightly bump up/down results for particular reasons (your own, not due to someone else paying an ad placement fee!)

IneffablePigeon 1y ago
Yeah I’ve just set any search starting with !m to redirect to google maps. It’s in the custom search settings somewhere. I also find Kagi good in the UK - it wasn’t amazing when I first subscribed but got a lot better quite fast. I do occasionally add “uk” to a search when shopping but I did that on Google too.

balder1991 1y ago

That’s my issue too, as a Brazilian. For anything more localized, Google is the only choice that has usable results. I leave DDG as my default engine and intentionally go to Google only when I need something that’s more “Brazilian context”.

Marsymars 1y ago

Might depend a bit on your desired experience. I find Google to be too aggressively localized, where (from Canada) I’ll search for (made up example) e.g. “Eiffel Tower” and instead of the results that I’d want to be #1 and #2 (wikipedia and toureiffel.paris), I’ll get (after a pile of ads) “JimBob’s Eiffel Towel Of French Fries”, “kid builds scale model of Eiffel Tower for local science fair” and some tour company offering Eiffel Tower tours.

GeneralMaximus 1y ago

> Does Kagi have a better localized experience? I'm in India and it works well. I can even search in Hindi and get good results. The only thing that doesn't work are local points of interests (restaurants, hotels, local businesses, etc). I still have to use Google Maps to look these up. Then again, even Apple doesn't have good local results for PoIs in India, so I don't expect Kagi to get this right either. That said, I often turn off localized results completely and just use the international results. Those tend to be more diverse and more useful, at least for the sort of searches I tend to do.

benhurmarcel 1y ago
I really like Kagi for this reason, the ability to choose whether I want "international" results or localized to a country (and choose the country, sometimes it's not mine). I agree that for very localized results (not at country level but city level), I still use Google instead.

Matumio 1y ago

I once had weird results with searching specifically in the Switzerland region, it didn't find an obviously Swiss site. IIRC it was solved it by switching back to international search. I'm using Kagi exclusively, and I don't remember having such trouble recently. Maybe they fixed it. I just did a quick test: local search for a specific law term. Kagi, Google and DDG all found the roughly same relevant sites in the top five. Each has a different top result. Google's and DDG's are a private law company. Kagi's first is an official government site. (With a suspicious non-government domain, so I had to check, but yes it's prominently linked from the main government site.)

maleldil 1y ago

Works very well in the UK. Local news, government websites, etc. You can easily change the country in the results page, which is useful for people who speak multiple languages. With DuckDuckGo, I sometimes had to resort to !g to use Google, but I haven't done that in Kagi for ages.

dakial1 1y ago

...and pricing.

martin82 1y ago

I'm in Singapore and Kagi is great. Been using it for a couple fo years now.

hojinkoh 1y ago

Native Asian, bouncing between Taiwan and Japan. Kagi works quite well for these two locales. Even for gov docs, medical docs, and for some rather obscure Taiwanese language things. Well, except for local shops and pois in Taiwan. Which is reasonable. Google map also sucks for less-populated Taiwanese areas. I kind of have to rely on my good old legs for that.