81–90 of 220 posts
They should implement regional pricing. UD$10/month is too much in a lot of countries.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article addresses a huge aspect: It's customizable. I frequently know I'm looking for say, a learn.microsoft.com page. So if I boost that domain, and one of the results is on that site, it moves towards the top of the page. My results are explicitly better for me because I am able to tell the search engine what I want to see.
In most search engines, including Google and DDG, you could input, site:learn.microsoft.com It restricts results to that domain.
Oh, I didn't know it was time for HN's biweekly Kagi post. Those are invaluable, I use them as a personal reminder for me to water my cactus.
However lately, I've found that it started sucking a lot more when it comes to localised search. I am actually not seeing the value and quality I've seen early on, and will likely stop paying for it as I increasingly do have to fall back to Google.
Years ago when I tried out DDG, I found myself appending !g to every query, and I thought that Google Search would always have a place in my life, but Kagi results are _so_ good.
So, once YouTube has a viable replacement I might be able to delete my Google account.
Let me give an example. On Kagi, I searched up "Overcoming addiction to Reddit". On Kagi, most of the top results are actually just Reddit posts about drug addiction / addiction in general and not Reddit addiction [1]. If you scroll down, the is a result about internet addiction, but that isn't what I asked for either. Only once you get to the very bottom do you actually get links about Reddit addiction itself. Even then, there aren't that many.
If you do the same query on Google, I get much more results that are actually about Reddit addiction [2]. On top of that, the relevant results are way closer to the top than on Kagi. It even includes high quality links like a Hacker News post on Reddit addiction. I believe Kagi included the same link, but it was hidden all the way on the third page as opposed to being somewhat near the top on Google. Don't get me wrong, Google's results aren't perfect and it has a lot of irrelevant stuff show up in my query about Reddit addiction. But it's still better than Kagi.
My theory is that Kagi just saw the words "overcoming addiction" and "Reddit" and assumed I wanted to look for links about addiction in general on Reddit. Basically it's almost like it did "overcoming addiction site:reddit.com" for the top results. Albeit, after the top results it does show links from other sources. Meanwhile, it seems Google did a better job at parsing the query and realizing I was looking up a specific type of addiction, a Reddit addiction. Kagi did not do this.
My next problem with Kagi is just the lack of results in general. It seems Kagi likes to return a limited number of results per search. It seems it usually gives 20-30 results and sometimes gives more (~70 results) if you give it a very generic query. The problem with this is it makes Kagi terrible for research. In daily life, I never even read past the first few pages on Google. But when researching a niche topic for a paper, you sometimes need to go way past the first page to find what you're looking for. This might be because when doing research on something vague or niche it's hard to get accurate matches on the first page of search. As a result, having a large number of search result pages in general is useful for when this happens. But Kagi simply doesn't do this. It's limit on how many results it returns just kills the ability for you to actually go more in-depth without issuing a modified search query. I seriously doubt Kagi's index is literally so small it can only return around 70 something results at max, so I just have to think this is some self-imposed limitation which ultimately harms the search quality.
Another problem I have with Kagi are lenses. Lenses get hyped up by them, but in practice I found them utterly terrible. I searched up Lo Mein without lenses on and my first results were some pretty high quality recipes. I then turned on the recipe lens and the quality noticeably decreased. Instead of returning Lo Mein recipes from actual recipe sites, it instead returns a Reddit post that links to a gif of someone making Lo Mein. Issue is that gif is actually on gfycat which is shut down. So the top result is useless. The rest of the results aren't even Lo Mein recipes, but instead chicken recipes for instance. So in the process of trying to use lenses to increase my search quality, it actually made it worse.
Also, a tiny nit is that Kagi isn't as good at getting quick answers. If I look up a question on Google, it will usually display some quick summary at the top with the answer to the question. Kagi has quick answer too, but you have to manually click on it to get Kagi to generate the quick answer. I get they're a startup trying to save money, but this is just another reason for me to use Google over Kagi.
As a whole, I haven't found Kagi to be useful at all like many commenters claim it is. I really wanted Kagi to work out as again I love the idea of Kagi. But ultimately, I can't justify using it over Google because the quality has just been so much worse in my experience. Ultimately, I am paying money for Kagi, yet I am getting a lower quality product than Google which is free. At that point, it doesn't make sense for me to continue with Kagi.
1. https://kagi.com/search?q=overcoming+addiction+to+reddit
2. https://www.google.com/search?q=overcoming+addiction+to+redd... (Google may show different results to you because Google might be customizing results based on past searches)
I should probably add in that kagi has some secret modes. If you precede the search query with `!expert` you get an LLM search response. If you precede it with `!code` you get a GPT-4-ish tuned response. It’s… really good. And since you can do it from a browser bar if you make it your default browser, I find myself reaching for !expert at least 50% as often as ChatGPT these days. Also, it’s extremely good with citati…
1: https://kagifeedback.org/d/2136-sep-28-2023-assistant-beta-a...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aren't your Kagi searches tied to a payment method? That it doesn't exploit you in every way possible is commendable, but stating that it "solves the privacy issues" is a long stretch.
> Aren't your Kagi searches tied to a payment method? Kagi accepts Bitcoin [1]. They also “do not log searches or in any way tie them to an account” [2]. [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/plans/payment-methods.html [2] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-protection.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the risk of sounding like a kagi marketer/shill/peddler/whatever, if it helps at all, it's actually not just search. Sort of. Kagi is slowly rolling out some AI-backed features, and will probably work in other areas too. Two of the flagship AI bits right now are Quick Answer and the Universal Summariser. Quick Answer collates your search results and gives you a summary of them, with inline references included. Thi…
> Quick Answer collates your search results and gives you a summary of them, with inline references included. This can be alternately useful or somewhat humorous, and sometimes not even a little bit useful. For example, I share a name with a researcher who happens to have worked at the same university I do. I am not an academic and my namesake died several years ago. Quick Answer lumps us into the same person, and I…
To be clear, the references Quick Answer provides are legitimate, since they are taken from the search results. The results for my name provide a reference to my namesake's obituary and also to my public profile on the institution website. ie "[ToasterOS] died in 2013[1] and he currently works as a [Job Title][2]". It's just a pretty unique situation where a full name search returns an obit AND a living person's profile on the same website. ChatGPT will indeed create completely bogus references when asked, but this isn't that.
> This seems interesting, though I'm secretly (or not so, now it's on here) hoping it's not another lazy ChatGPT integration
I believe it's GPT but it is their own implementation of FastGPT instead of an API thing.
> This is intriguing -- may I ask in what way it's better? Are there any anecdotes you could share?
I search a LOT. In fact the billing page says I've made 540 searches since September 24th; maybe that's higher than most or significantly lower, I don't know. I find search is my main entrypoint into the web; I rarely use bookmarks or anything, and I'll often search things that I want updates on.
As a VERY silly example - I play Old School RuneScape (OSRS). OSRS has two Wikis - an official one, and a crappy one hosted on Fandom. Google tends to prioritise results from the Fandom wiki, which is full of inaccurate information as well as all the other warts Fandom has. Kagi immediately put the official Wiki ahead of that, and also gave me the option to completely remove the Fandom Wiki from future searches. I realise using a search engine as an entrypoint to a Wiki is quite silly, but Wiki searches tend to require exact terminology whereas a web search allows me to be more fuzzy. So, I'm generally finding I can search on Kagi for the functions of things in the game, and subsequently be lead to the correct Wiki article on the correct Wiki right away.
To be a little more real though - I am finding Kagi does an excellent job of cutting out dead internet cruft out of results. One of my favourite pieces of content on the web is a winemaking guide on creating 32-bit winebottles[0]. Spammy, automatically generated articles like this one don't appear in my results for things. I instead find that legitimate content is put ahead of it, and so I find I can trust the top results more. And, in cases where bad content is being prioritised - I can just block it.
I haven't got much use out of them yet but I also quite enjoy the Lenses feature, which allows me to hone in my search to a specific "part" of the web. I also have presences in two countries, and it's nice to be able to select which country I want my search to "take place in".
And then there is just... it's not Google. I hope it remains a decent company for a long time, because I really am happier knowing I'm paying for a service with currency instead of just...incidentally via my participation.
[0]: https://www.slowine.com/how-to-make-a-32-bit-wine-bottle/
Just chiming in here. My experience is: * Google search was good, but has been steadily getting worse. Over the last 1-3 years it's become actively unplesant. * DDG solves a lot of privacy issues, but the search quality is strictly worse than Google. I know people who use it preferentially, and I respect that, but personally Google search is already so bad than opting for something even worse is hard for me to accept…
Aren't your Kagi searches tied to a payment method? That it doesn't exploit you in every way possible is commendable, but stating that it "solves the privacy issues" is a long stretch.
> Unlike "free" search engines, we do not log searches or in any way tie them to an account.
So if you trust them to do what they say, then yes, that pretty much solves the issue. If not, well...