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How I Use Kagi

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Re: How I Use Kagi

#141

Post by seabass »

freediver wrote: post #107
seabass wrote: post #52

I tried to give Kagi a fair shot by using it for a few months. I loved a lot of features, especially the boost/block lists. But I always felt the responses were way too slow for something I use that much. I benchmarked a handful of queries and confirmed they were consistently ~3x slower than Google for normal searches and 5-10x slower for image searches on my home network. I’m sure there are many factors that play in…

That is unusual. Have you tried reaching out to support@kagi.com ?

Yep, they had me check my proximity to the nearest Google Cloud region. The ping was ~30ms, so that was pretty unlikely to be the cause. In my screen recordings that compared the exact same searches, despite the low ping, Kagi results wouldn’t appear for around 2s. A search I did just now shows “39 relevant results in 1.7s”. Otoh with Google it feels instant—0.29s for that same search. With their support team we never did end up finding the cause.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#142

Post by jorvi »

terribleperson wrote: post #86
metasaval wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no Google apologist (I use ecosia personally), but did you try using searching in quotes? That should force the search to only find specifically your query directly as spelled. Just curious if you did try it and there was still that "fuzziness."

Google overrides quotes whenever it feels like nowadays. Has for a few years.

  must include: herrings | missing: herrings

Re: How I Use Kagi

#143

Post by vsri »

7373737373 wrote: post #112
freediver wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi founder here. I notice you bring this up consistently in Kagi discussions. A search engine's job is to deliver the best possible results. We evaluate API sources on search quality, not geopolitics. Yandex represents 2% of our costs but contributes meaningfully to search quality - removing it would harm all users while having minimal economic impact. We've used their API since 2019 and evaluate all sources purely…

If you can't judge that funding war criminals is a wrong action, you should reconsider your ability to do so morally Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, startup founders aren't exactly known for putting anything else above money and their ideas, particularly actual human well-being. Consider that you, too, will have to live in the world that you help create, including the consequences of "a mere 2%"

> If you can't judge that funding war criminals is a wrong action

Yandex does not equal Russia though.

The United States gov't has participated in what many consider illegal acts of aggression (i.e., war crimes) and do so using tools like PowerPoint. Is it moral to accept Microsoft as a client?

I'm not saying I know the right answer here, but the purity test you're proposing seems quite stringent.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#144

Post by Scotrix »

J_McQuade wrote: post #4

I always feel really grotty about evangelising for products, but I switched to Kagi about six months ago and it really is a better experience. In almost all cases, the search results are as good as or better than Google, and I don't have to scroll through an increasing number of misleading ads to see them. I'm a happy customer. When I first switched, I would often click the button to run the search on google for quer…

I switched as well and I actually use the AI assistant since then primarily. It’s awesome to connect search directly with AI, almost always get what I want immediately.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#145

Post by jorvi »

freediver wrote: post #93
lukan wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there some recommended curated lists, that I could use being new to kagi? I don't like pinterest and co. either. (Specific things one likely has to tweak)

Yes, start here https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard (logged in)

FWIW, it's much better to downrank a page than to outright block it. Blocking is for a page you never, ever want to see.

I personally dislike Pinterest and TikTok, but sometimes it might be the only source of an image or video. Blocking means you don't get to see that result.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#146

Post by TheBozzCL »

J_McQuade wrote: post #4

I always feel really grotty about evangelising for products, but I switched to Kagi about six months ago and it really is a better experience. In almost all cases, the search results are as good as or better than Google, and I don't have to scroll through an increasing number of misleading ads to see them. I'm a happy customer. When I first switched, I would often click the button to run the search on google for quer…

To me, the killer feature has been the ability to filter out sites from my search results. I removed all of Pinterest, several tabloids and conspiracy sites, any obvious AI-generated sites that I run into, and just with that my search result quality has increased drastically.

It's a feature that I'd like other search engines to adopt natively.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#147

Post by testfrequency »

lomlobon wrote: post #137
testfrequency wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. If I’m understanding you here, you use both Kagi and Calude for general search? Assuming you default with Kagi, but switch to Claude (API? Raycast?) for search if you don’t like the results you get? Perplexity I’ve found incredibly powerful for search as it’s fast, and I love being able to toggle “Social” as a source quickly before sending an inquiry off - in case I want opinions vs sources. That said, I have…

Probably they are using 'Kagi Assistant', which is essentially kagi acting as an intermediary to the major LLMs. You get a catalog and a monthly quota. Pretty handy. You can also make your assistants use the same custom 'lenses' you do to constrain their searches.

Interesting. The lenses sound similar to “Spaces” on Perplexity, where you can segment searches to a specific prompt every go and upload files etc for context. Safe to assume that’s a pretty common feature now, maybe I should look at Kagi again - it’s been a few years since I’ve last peeked at it.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#148

Post by vickychijwani »

cosmicgadget wrote: post #131
pphysch wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boycott particular examples of evil that they disagree with politically .

I am curious about your politics that favor the invasion of Ukraine.

I’m curious about your politics that are comfortable accepting a long list of invasions by the US, but somehow draw the line when it comes to this particular invasion.

I’m not saying it’s good to favour invasive countries, I’m just saying this is hypocritical. I have no particular love for either the US or Russia.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#149

Post by i_love_retros »

jwr wrote: post #12

Unfortunately, Kagi works with Russian companies and pays them money, which in my book is a no-no. I do not want any of my money to contribute to the Russian economy in any way, because I know what is happening to people in Ukraine. (I was a Kagi subscriber, no more, because of this)

Do you also boycott American companies since America is funding a genocide in Gaza, or is that less convenient?

Re: How I Use Kagi

#150

Post by i_love_retros »

GoatInGrey wrote: post #125
freediver wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi founder here. I notice you bring this up consistently in Kagi discussions. A search engine's job is to deliver the best possible results. We evaluate API sources on search quality, not geopolitics. Yandex represents 2% of our costs but contributes meaningfully to search quality - removing it would harm all users while having minimal economic impact. We've used their API since 2019 and evaluate all sources purely…

I cancelled my kagi subscription upon seeing this response. I donate to Ukraine to defend itself from Russia. I lost a family member to Russian artillery as well while providing medical aid to civilians. I very much do not want my dollars to fund the very thing that my donations are intended to defend against. I'm going to assume you run a similar policy with Chinese search providers. After seeing Chinese warships of…

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