Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users • Hacker News Board

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#261

Post by Dah00n » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 7:18 AM UTC

abtinf wrote: post #105

Every time Kagi comes up, a lot of folks say it is too expensive. That it should be unlimited. That if it was just $x per month, then it would be worth it. That they feel uncomfortable about the limits. I will simply say that I cannot imagine going back to being a “user” of a “search provider” over being a paying Kagi customer. It is the single most critical service I worry about losing. If they octupled the price to…

Not all HN users are US tech employees though. How much US$25 is differs a lot.

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#262

Post by phreack » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 7:27 AM UTC

MrVandemar wrote: post #13

The top-ranked sources really show Kagi's current demographic. It obviously is attractive to programmers and IT professionals. I wonder if they are interested in attracting users with more diverse searching requirements, and if so, how they would be able to actually reach them.

I feel that programmers are the main audience that knows life can be better in software. A typical programmer might be so offended by Pinterest's awfulness that they'll look for any way to prevent it, knowing it can be done. Some might go for an extension like uBlacklist, others might be so furious that they want to pay money to stop this somehow.

But seriously, I do think that unless you work with software, it's hard to even imagine alternatives to the big players could exist.

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#263

Post by wanderingmind » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 7:28 AM UTC

Although boosting cant be done, blocking can be achieved using ublockorigin and custom filters. Here is an awesome spam filter list that removes spam and copycat domains from google and ddg searches[1]

[1]https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#264

Post by bunga-bunga » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 7:29 AM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #82

Pinterest was certainly the first site I blocked. I've never understood the hate for w3schools. No, it's not MDN, but it's not offensively bad either, and it's been a helpful reference from time to time. If w3schools comes up first in a search, I trust that it probably has the answer to whatever very simple question I must have asked, unlike something like Pinterest, which will just be spam no matter what.

> it's not offensively bad either

In your opinion. W3fools only pulled an “it’s ok now bro, don’t sue us” update. Anytime I give it a go, I’m still presented with inaccurate and harmfully incomplete results.

Want to learn from a “for dummies” website? Be my guest. But my hate is fully justified.

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#265

Post by dehugger » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 7:30 AM UTC

ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #246

freediver wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a discussion on our forum [1] about this. Input welcome! [1] https://kagifeedback.org/d/493-enable-anonymous-payments-ala...

Yikes, that thread reflects so badly on Kagi to me. Over a year of people explaining why Monero is needed if you actually cared about user privacy, with no results. Weird claims that it is difficult to implement. Can only conclude that the company doesn't actually care about user privacy

Or, more likely, they didn't want to take on the additional burden of transacting in funny money of dubious worth.

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#266

Post by 0x073 » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 7:31 AM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #248

microflash wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it is expensive in countries where dollar conversion rates are very high due to inflation. I did ask about introducing different prices based on purchasing power parity in different geographies but got a very polite rebuff :)

They claim that the prices are largely defined by the actual cost of the search, with fairly slim margins. In which case they literally can't do what you asked without becoming unprofitable.

They spend 5% of their profit for donations. It's ok as a company for general, but for payment with this low rates of search results and the argument that they can't reduce the price because of the cost. I get mixed feelings.

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#267

Post by Terr_ » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 7:31 AM UTC

LAC-Tech wrote: post #83

LeoPanthera wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...BBC? Ars Technica? ...KQED and VOA? You're blocking discussion of some of the most reliably factual reporting on the planet.

shrugs I don't really feel the need to defend the contents of that list. If the resulting conversations suck, aren't relevant to me, and clog up the HN front page - in they go.

> I don't really feel the need to defend the contents of that list.

You were quite willing to promote the specific and lengthy list of disliked-sites to strangers.

A sudden switch to fatigue and disinterest does not seem genuine to me.

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#268

Post by prartichoke » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 7:38 AM UTC

freediver wrote: post #169

arealaccount wrote: post #110

Tried out a few searches that I’ve recently struggled with on both DDG and Google, very impressed. Seems worth it, especially if I can get a license through work. I wonder how they will keep their results shielded from SEO spam if they hit a critical mass. Presumably Google would love to have useful results beneath all their ads, but can’t seem to win over all of the “organic” blogs.

> I wonder how they will keep their results shielded from SEO spam if they hit a critical mass. We mitigate SEO spam effectively by downranking websites that use ads or trackers. SEO spam websites predominantly rely on ads for monetization, which makes them easily detectable. This strategy of combating ads in every form, everywhere, has proven to be an efficient method for prioritizing high-quality web results.

Pretty simple then. Just doing the exact opposite of what Google is doing. Makes sense

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#269

Post by anoncow » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 7:39 AM UTC

The top websites that people like are Wikipedia, Stack overflow and Mozilla Developers

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#270

Post by viraptor » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 7:42 AM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #201

nine_k wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you miss he point. The usefulness of a per-user block list is not fighting outright spam. The statistical filters, etc, as applied by the search engine, work best here, as you correctly state. The point is to remove certain well-known sites with information about well-known topics, which is unhelpful for the particular user , me. That information is technically not spam, but it's on a wrong level, badly prese…

> That information is technically not spam, but it's on a wrong level, badly presented, etc. I'd count that kind of low quality site as spam, and the problem is that there's a basically an infinite supply of them. The boost feature is more interesting in that the curation is at least not a never-ending task. New high quality sites that I know about don't pop up all that often! It's still not an entirely robust featur…

> New high quality sites that I know about don't pop up all that often!

But when they do, how are you going to know if all you see is the mediocre spam instead? No, I want to block the domains which are never going to be a good result. This may actually surface things I will want to boost.