Kagi Small Web • Hacker News Board

Re: Kagi Small Web

#41

Post by ArtificeAccount » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 12:02 PM UTC

the_pwner224 wrote: post #39

ArtificeAccount wrote: post #31

I've been using the Kagi search engine for months now and I'm not impressed. I bought into it because there were a lot of posts saying that it was "just like old Google" but this has not been my experience. It's the same as new Google, you can type in what you're looking for exactly and you'll get random sort-of related websites. I remember when you could half-remember a comment from a website, type that into Google,…

I switched about a year ago. At the time it did seem like a step up from Google results. But there's been an increasing prevalence of low quality results. Blogspam, AI websites, etc. Obviously not blaming Kagi here, web search has gotten hard recently. Is Kagi still better than Google? Probably, I don't really know because I don't use Google anymore. But at this point I feel like I'm with them out of inertia more tha…

I feel the same way. I'm probably going to end my subscription at some point, but right now the effort involved is what's keeping me with Kagi.

Re: Kagi Small Web

#42

Post by ArtificeAccount » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 12:03 PM UTC

windowliker wrote: post #35

ArtificeAccount wrote: post #31

I've been using the Kagi search engine for months now and I'm not impressed. I bought into it because there were a lot of posts saying that it was "just like old Google" but this has not been my experience. It's the same as new Google, you can type in what you're looking for exactly and you'll get random sort-of related websites. I remember when you could half-remember a comment from a website, type that into Google,…

Funny to look back and recall how useful web search actually was at one point. Ahh the good old days.

The enshittification of everything has really put a damper on the technological optimism that seemed to be the norm back then.

Re: Kagi Small Web

#43

Post by sodapopcan » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 12:04 PM UTC

ArtificeAccount wrote: post #40

hrmtst93837 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Whatever it was called, it was way better than whatever Google is doing currently.

In fairness, there wasn't the level of utter crap back then that there is now. Not that there wasn't a LOT back then, but there is even more now.

Re: Kagi Small Web

#44

Post by user3939382 » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 12:04 PM UTC

ArtificeAccount wrote: post #31

I've been using the Kagi search engine for months now and I'm not impressed. I bought into it because there were a lot of posts saying that it was "just like old Google" but this has not been my experience. It's the same as new Google, you can type in what you're looking for exactly and you'll get random sort-of related websites. I remember when you could half-remember a comment from a website, type that into Google,…

For over two years I’ve maintained the practice of using Kagi and falling back to Google if I couldn’t find something. I can count the number of successes doing that on one hand. In the meantime I get to support a company which actually respects me as a user and isn’t doing things like tying accounts to browsers, AMP (trying to take over the web), trying to kill adblock, etc.

Re: Kagi Small Web

#45

Post by codethief » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 12:05 PM UTC

input_sh wrote: post #34

Could've at least checked if the website even allows embedding before embedding it, I found two by randomly clicking around that don't.

Yeah, many links in the embedded blog posts don't work either, presumably because the target website doesn't allow embedding. On mobile I always have to open them in a new tab for them to work.

Re: Kagi Small Web

#46

Post by unbindableisaac » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 12:06 PM UTC

bjord wrote: post #30

unbindableisaac wrote: post #23

Bit bummed. The first random page I landed on was a really interesting article for me. The custom cursor (well why not) had me struggling to following a link, and instinctively I refreshed the page. I ended up somewhere else in the haystack with ostensibly no way back to that particular article. Perhaps I'm yelling into the void here, but what would be great is when first landing at kagi.com/smallweb, the url query p…

doesn't solve the root problem, but maybe try searching for the topic in kagi with the small web lens?

I think it would, so long as the redirected URL with the search parameter was diarized into browser history. It would however introduce a behavior change that may be undesired (users need to know to press "Next Post" instead of refreshing).

In any case, my Kagi search for the article containing the memorable phrase "rare as rocking-horse s*t" came up empty. Perhaps it's not yet been indexed.

Re: Kagi Small Web

#47

Post by rusty-peanuts » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 12:09 PM UTC

ArtificeAccount wrote: post #42

windowliker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny to look back and recall how useful web search actually was at one point. Ahh the good old days.

The enshittification of everything has really put a damper on the technological optimism that seemed to be the norm back then.

[dead]

Re: Kagi Small Web

#48

Post by zknill » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 12:13 PM UTC

ArtificeAccount wrote: post #31

I've been using the Kagi search engine for months now and I'm not impressed. I bought into it because there were a lot of posts saying that it was "just like old Google" but this has not been my experience. It's the same as new Google, you can type in what you're looking for exactly and you'll get random sort-of related websites. I remember when you could half-remember a comment from a website, type that into Google,…

I've been using Kagi for ~18months and your description doesn't match my experience at all.

Querying for something like "snowflake json from variant?" in both engines and in google I get a sort-of-right-but-not-really-that-helpful ai summary about "parse_json" function. In Kagi I get an actually useful summary with code examples of parse_json, but also the colon-based syntax for accessing values inside nested objects without needing to parse anything.

I very rarely need to go into a page, I use Kagi quick search summary with the "?" suffix and it almost always gives me a useful answer in one-shot.

Re: Kagi Small Web

#49

Post by ArtificeAccount » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 12:17 PM UTC

sodapopcan wrote: post #43

ArtificeAccount wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever it was called, it was way better than whatever Google is doing currently.

In fairness, there wasn't the level of utter crap back then that there is now. Not that there wasn't a LOT back then, but there is even more now.

People say that, but on the other hand companies like Google have a lot of much better ways of categorizing things now than they did in the past. I'm not sure I buy the excuse of "gosh, it's just too hard for us :(" from this international company worth trillions employing geniuses.

It really feels either intentional or egregiously incompetent.

Re: Kagi Small Web

#50

Post by 7777777phil » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 12:18 PM UTC

I run a Hugo blog and I get more interesting referral traffic from Kagi's small web index than from Google at this point. 5,000 curated sites is small enough to be useful most "indie web" directories are graveyards unfortunately..