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The “small web” is bigger than you might think

kevinboone.me

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Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#31

Post by freediver »

lich_king wrote: post #24

It's easy to hand-curate a list of 5,000 "small web" URLs. The problem is scaling. For example, Kagi has a hand-curated "small web" filter, but I never use it because far more interesting and relevant "small web" websites are outside the filter than in it. The same is true for most other lists curated by individual folks. They're neat, but also sort of useless because they are too small: 95% of the things you're look…

I mainly use Kagi Small Web as a starting point of my day, with my morning coffee. Especially now when categories are added, always find something worth reading. The size here does not present a problem as I would usually browse 20-30 sites this way.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#32

Post by sdenton4 »

BrenBarn wrote: post #20
lich_king wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google that now optimizes their algorithm for monetization and not usefulness. I don't think they do that. Instead, "usefulness" is mostly synonymous with commercial intent: searching for often means "I want to buy ". Even for non-commercial queries, I think the sad reality is that most people subconsciously prefer LLM-generated or content-farmed stuff too. It looks more professional, has nice images (never mind th…

> I think that Google gives the average person exactly the results they want. There is some truth in this, but to me it's similar to saying that a drug dealer gives their customers exactly what they want. People "want" those things because Google and its ilk have conditioned them to want those things.

On the one hand, a search engine is not heroin... It's a pretty broken analogy.

On the other hand, we could probably convince Cory Doctorow to write a piece about how fentanyl is really about the enshitification of opiates.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#33

Post by freediver »

Kagi Small Web has about 32K sites and I'd like to think that we have captured most of (english speaking) personal blogs out there (we are adding about 10 per day and a significant effort went into discovering/fidning them).

It is kind of sad that the entire size of this small web is only 30k sites these days.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#34

Post by oopsiremembered »

8organicbits wrote: post #16

One objection I have to the kagi smallweb approach is the avoidance of infrequently updated sites. Some of my favorite blogs post very rarely; but when they post it's a great read. When I discover a great new blog that hasn't been updated in years I'm excited to add it to my feed reader, because it's a really good signal that when they publish again it will be worth reading.

I'm with you. Also, sometimes I'm specifically looking for some dusty old site that has long been forgotten about. Maybe I'm trying to find something I remember from ages ago. Or maybe I'm trying to deeply research something.

There's a lot more to fixing search than prioritizing recency. In fact, I think recency bias sometimes makes search worse.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#35

Post by pil0u »

freediver wrote: post #33

Kagi Small Web has about 32K sites and I'd like to think that we have captured most of (english speaking) personal blogs out there (we are adding about 10 per day and a significant effort went into discovering/fidning them). It is kind of sad that the entire size of this small web is only 30k sites these days.

[dead]

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#36

Post by 101008 »

varun_ch wrote: post #22

A fun trend on the "small web" is the use of 88x31 badges that link to friends websites or in webrings. I have a few on my website, and you can browse a ton of small web websites that way. https://varun.ch (at the bottom of the page) There's also a couple directories/network graphs https://matdoes.dev/buttons https://eightyeightthirty.one/

A beautiful trend that has been going for 30 years ;-)

One of the happiest moments of my childhood (I'm exagerating) was when my button was placed in that website that I loved to visit everyday. It was one of the best validations I ever received :)

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#37

Post by [deleted] »

freediver wrote: post #33

Kagi Small Web has about 32K sites and I'd like to think that we have captured most of (english speaking) personal blogs out there (we are adding about 10 per day and a significant effort went into discovering/fidning them). It is kind of sad that the entire size of this small web is only 30k sites these days.

[deleted]

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#38

Post by savolai »

freediver wrote: post #33

Kagi Small Web has about 32K sites and I'd like to think that we have captured most of (english speaking) personal blogs out there (we are adding about 10 per day and a significant effort went into discovering/fidning them). It is kind of sad that the entire size of this small web is only 30k sites these days.

Does this use frames or iframe? https://kagi.com/smallweb

I would expect a raw link in the top bar to the page shown, to be able to bookmark it etc.

Re: The “small web” is bigger than you might think

#39

Post by lich_king »

freediver wrote: post #31
lich_king wrote: post #24

It's easy to hand-curate a list of 5,000 "small web" URLs. The problem is scaling. For example, Kagi has a hand-curated "small web" filter, but I never use it because far more interesting and relevant "small web" websites are outside the filter than in it. The same is true for most other lists curated by individual folks. They're neat, but also sort of useless because they are too small: 95% of the things you're look…

I mainly use Kagi Small Web as a starting point of my day, with my morning coffee. Especially now when categories are added, always find something worth reading. The size here does not present a problem as I would usually browse 20-30 sites this way.

Right, but that basically works as a retro alternative to scrolling through social media. If you're looking for something specific, it's simultaneously true that there's a small web page that answers your question and that it's not on any "small web" list because the owner of the webpage never submitted it there, or didn't meet the criteria for inclusion.

For example, I have several non-commercial, personal websites that I think anyone would agree are "small web", but each of them fails the Kagi inclusion criteria for a different reason. One is not a blog, another is a blog but with the wrong cadence of posts, etc.

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