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Back to Kagi

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Re: Back to Kagi

#91

Post by calessian »

sanderjd wrote: post #65
o_m wrote: post #17

I've subscribed to Kagi for three of years now. Kagi is still great, but it doesn't feel like "Google ten years ago" anymore. I don't think it is because Kagi got worse, rather it is the web that has become worse. The content nowadays kinda sucks.

But this is also why Google "sucks now". The thesis of these competitors was that Google got worse because of bad product decisions or implementation failures. But I found that to be a very questionable thesis from the start.

Google can both be worse because of the web results declining in quality and terrible product decisions. It is of course much easier to see one of the two, and make an alternative search interface possibly using different rating criteria. It just can’t solve the entire issue, because spam is also absolutely cheap to mass produce now.

Re: Back to Kagi

#92

Post by Arkhaine_kupo »

sanderjd wrote: post #65
o_m wrote: post #17

I've subscribed to Kagi for three of years now. Kagi is still great, but it doesn't feel like "Google ten years ago" anymore. I don't think it is because Kagi got worse, rather it is the web that has become worse. The content nowadays kinda sucks.

But this is also why Google "sucks now". The thesis of these competitors was that Google got worse because of bad product decisions or implementation failures. But I found that to be a very questionable thesis from the start.

> The thesis of these competitors was that Google got worse because of bad product decisions or implementation failures.

But they did though. Google results got significantly worse after ads started lagging in revenue. So they hindered search and increased focus on the ad platform which shot up profits in 2019 I believe.

The web becoming more inhospitable is true. But Google has the tools, the data, and the engineers to wade through the bs and return good results. They just rather have bad results and good ads because that is where their bread is buttered.

A lot of competitors are working with a fraction of the budget, teams and data. So asking a small team to do proper AI detection, to return smaller indexed sites with high quality info over mass linked SEO abused hellscapes is very complicated, but asking Google to figure it out is proportional to their talent, expertise and resources.

It just not going to move their bottom line, so search is de prioritised compared to ads (some might even argue its made worse on purpose to make ads look even better)

Re: Back to Kagi

#94

Post by hbn »

mathw wrote: post #42
joshstrange wrote: post #36

I've been paying for Kagi for almost 3 years now but with the advent of LLMs (really in the past 3-6 month) my usage has fallen off a cliff. I really wish they included some level of API/MCP access so I'd like to continue to support what they are trying to do but every month when I get charged I think "Is this still worth paying for?". I could just pay for their API directly instead of my subscription but I wish they…

You could just not use LLMs and retain your brain function.

Trawling through bad documentation and even worse Stack Overflow answers to figure out how to use some API was not using my brain functions. It was wasting my time and making me lose the flow of the important parts of my work.

I used to lose entire days trying to figure out some stupid error in a build chain or trying to upgrade through some library's breaking change. Now I can get it done in a few minutes and I don't believe I've lost out on any great "problem solving opportunities."

Re: Back to Kagi

#95

Post by mark_something »

hyperionultra wrote: post #3

Does search engines still relevant enough in LLM age? My grandma and grandpa already using cgpt voice for anything related web search. And if this demography shifting, imagine youth…

Indeed, Perplexity is so much more useful to me, because I usually have a question, that I can just enter and get an answer that usually is correct. And it also gives sources so I can check the answer and find more info. Try e.g. typing "what does defer do in Zig" into a search engine, one of the last questions I asked. Perplexity immediately gave a clear answer.

I only use a search engine to find a specific website if I know the website should exist but don't know its URL, e.g. the website of a festival.

Re: Back to Kagi

#96

Post by cyanydeez »

o_m wrote: post #17

I've subscribed to Kagi for three of years now. Kagi is still great, but it doesn't feel like "Google ten years ago" anymore. I don't think it is because Kagi got worse, rather it is the web that has become worse. The content nowadays kinda sucks.

kagi sorts by recency and thats the best. i dont just want this months results but whats been update.

of course i dont know how they calculate but hopefully they SEO proof against listicles that just increment date stamps with the same stale content

Re: Back to Kagi

#97

Post by rpdillon »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #56
rpdillon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're still ultimately scraping other engines pages to get the results though. The last time this was discussed an engineer on their team told me that they were building their own index internally, but I couldn't get any additional information about that and it doesn't appear to be in their docs.

Why is it bad if they're using other engines to produce results?

I like paying to invest in a new sustainable ecosystem. Using SERP API doesn't feel like that to me. See Brave for a counterexample.

Re: Back to Kagi

#98

Post by OleksandrC »

rsolva wrote: post #85
everfrustrated wrote: post #29

I feel sorry for Kagi. I've paid for the last couple of years as I support a better web search. But I've found my web searching is so small now with AI. I checked and I did less than 300 Kagi searches last month so downgraded my plan. I wish them the best but timing is a b**.

I use Kagi's search API with my agents, including their summarizer, and it has been great!

This would be an interesting use case. But it seems API access is not included in the subscription? The value proposition would have been higher if it was (so one subscription for both human and agent use).

Re: Back to Kagi

#99

Post by cavoirom »

coldpie wrote: post #75

I've asked a number of times on HN threads for specific examples of searches that Kagi performs better on than DDG or Google, and never gotten a solid reply. It seems what people like about Kagi is the customization and surrounding tooling, but the actual search quality is about the same or possibly worse. That's cool, but I don't find it worth the cash personally.

I invite you to spend 10$ to try Kagi for 1 month. Try these features:

- Custom CSS. - Personalized search result: pin / block / raise / lower website on result. - Assistant: try the standard Assistant with Kiki K2.6 (reasoning), try to create custom assistant...

Kagi is a product package provides premium experience in retrieving knowledge from the Internet, it's not only search. No word can exchange for a personal experience with an open heart.

Re: Back to Kagi

#100

Post by mark_something »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #56
rpdillon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're still ultimately scraping other engines pages to get the results though. The last time this was discussed an engineer on their team told me that they were building their own index internally, but I couldn't get any additional information about that and it doesn't appear to be in their docs.

Why is it bad if they're using other engines to produce results?

If engine A uses the results of engine B, and engine B uses the results of engine A, there is a problem :-).
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