"No, seriously. All those things Google couldn't find anymore? Top of the search pile. Queries that generated pages of spam in Google results? Fucking pristine on Kagi – the right answers, over and ov

Submitted ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/14100831

"No, seriously. All those things Google couldn’t find anymore? Top of the search pile. Queries that generated pages of spam in Google results? Fucking pristine on Kagi – the right answers, over and ov

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solrize@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I tried Kagi (free 100 query plan) and got about the same results as google/DDG. It’s kind of nice but I couldn’t see subscribing. I hate subscriptions. If they sold access for a flat fee per query (let’s say $5 for 200 queries) I’d buy that, and use a dozen or so queries a month.

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- Kraiden@kbin.run ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  so I've just giving it a quick test vs google with the query "open source chromecast alternative"
  
  the first result for both is a reddit post about NymphCast
  
  it's the rest of the results that are interesting though.
  
  Google has a ycombinator news article about NymphCast and then decends into the usual "17 best chromecast alternatives in 2024" rubbish
  
  Kagi on the other hand lists the github for NymphCast, and then goes on to list others... mirrorCast, pyCaster, free Cast, an article on using a raspberry pi as a chromecast alternative.
  
  obviously this is only anecdotal, and very unscientific, but it's got me interested for sure! Gonna bookmark it and see how it goes
  
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  - surfrock66@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    No joke can you share those results? I’m holding out for matter cast
    
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- sbv@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I love the idea of paying for a high quality service that I use, but Kagi was significantly worse than Google. I searched for local businesses, programming questions, and general knowledge stuff.
  
  I’ll try it again in a year or two and see if it works for me.
  
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  - scrion@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I switched to Kagi about 6 months back. It is overall better, but at least on par with Google, also as far as tech / programming - related questions go. Whenever I do not get a useful result from Kagi, it literally finds nothing - I then try Google for verification, which also lists absolutely no results. That happened approximately 4 times since I switched.
    
    Kagi is worse than Google for: reviews, memes, porn, as well as “descriptive” searches, i. e. when trying to describe the desired result using natural language, e. g. “video game character that swallows everything” (I made that up just now for Kirby).
    
    Kagi’s ability to use lenses and assign weights to sites can make a big difference.
    
    At first, they didn’t have anonymous payments and an unattractive pricing model, but that has been fixed for a while, otherwise I wouldn’t have switched.
    
    Overall, I am very satisfied and have absolutely zero plans of ever using Google again.
    
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- Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Their business needs steady cashflows. You pay for the up time, not the queries.
  
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  - solrize@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Then they wouldn’t have tiered plans. Anyway try a $12/year plan with a few queries per month. $60/y adds up a lot faster.
    
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- sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yup, it’s way too expensive. If they bundled it with another service to provide more value, I might consider it. But from some back-of-the-napkin math, they’re charging way more than their competitors make from ads.
  
  I’d also be interested in a pay-per-search option. I’d be happy loading up $5 every so often if they other services didn’t find what I’m looking for.
  
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- Ginger666@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Search.brave.com ain’t bad
  
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  - Alto@kbin.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Too bad brave's CEO is a giant bigoted piece of shit who I refuse to support.
    
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- sanpo@sopuli.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I don’t use Kagi, but pretty sure they offer the plan you want.
  
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  - solrize@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They start at $5/month (kagi.com/pricing) and that misses some features. But, I thought they started at $10/month. It may have changed. Anyway, I hate subscriptions and would rather pay by the query. It’s something I’d use once in a while, so I don’t want to keep paying while it idles.
    
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Wappen@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
What kagi can’t fix is that most forums nowadays don’t exist anymore and moved over to discord which is also a big reason for worse search results.

For example I had a technical problem with a device of mine, searched for maybe half an hour on Google until I joined a related Discord. Searching there in the support channel and I found the fix for my problem. Would Discord not exist and all the content be queryable by Google I would have found my answer within seconds.

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- Etterra@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I don’t understand this trend and i hate that it’s a thing. I also hate Discord.i shouldn’t have to go to a fucking chat room when a forum works better.
  
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  - sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Exactly. I would be less mad if it was Matrix, but Matrix search is really slow and not likely to get better.
    
    Forums make a ton of sense.
    
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- Cyberflunk@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Absolutely despise discord, fucking internet herpes.
  
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  - sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah, Matrix is way better, but the search there is way too slow on busy channels.
    
    Just post stuff on the open Internet…
    
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- fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I really want to see more from the commune-os to make matrix communities more publically accessible or even selectivily. The AP bridge especially
  
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  - Cyberflunk@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    And they use discord… JFC.
    
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homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Even after all that payola, Google is still absurdly profitable. They have so much money, they were able to do a $80 billion stock buyback. Just a few months later, Google fired 12,000 skilled technical workers. Essentially, Google is saying that they don’t need to spend money on quality, because we’re all locked into using Google search. It’s cheaper to buy the default search box everywhere in the world than it is to make a product that is so good that even if we tried another search engine, we’d still prefer Google.

It’s been easily 15 years since I thought Google search was good.

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- foggy@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It was not long after the SSL thing that it became actively garbage that was what 2018?
  
  But yeah, it’s been bad since at least 2012.
  
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  - AnActOfCreation@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What SSL thing?
    
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1984@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
People say Kagi is the same but it’s not. It takes Googles results and filters out the crap and orders results differently, since it’s not trying to get you to go to some commercial site unless you intend to.

Also the lenses are great.

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- bloopernova@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Just being able to exclude certain sites, and reduce the ranking of others, makes search so much better in Kagi.
  
  I hope they eat Google’s lunch.
  
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  - Ginger666@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    There is an add-on for Firefox that blocks certain domains from coming up in search results.
    
    Super fucking helpful to block amazon
    
    Its called u blacklist
    
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  - shortwavesurfer@monero.town ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I used this to completely block Reddit.
    
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- FutileRecipe@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  It takes Googles results and filters out the crap and orders results differently…
  
  It uses more than just Google’s, FYI.
  
  help.kagi.com/kagi/…/search-sources.html
  
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  - caseyweederman@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Isn’t that what DDG was supposed to do?
    
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- ChuckEffingNorris@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This all works until Google cut off API access to a competitor right? Relying partly on a Google API is surely suicidal for a Google Search competitor…
  
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  - aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They use Bing’s index as well and also have their own
    
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- jg1i@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  If you don’t do anything except use it like Google, then you only get improved search results. But the other features like lenses, site ranking, URL rewriting, question mark instant answers, and document Q/A make it way more worth it to me.
  
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  - 1984@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I think people are just used to being passive now. They dont tinker with the tech and they think its all the same.
    
    People still use Chrome also because Google kept saying its “faster”, which doesnt even mean anything. Security, privacy and plugin support is what matters.
    
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Telodzrum@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Fuck off with your ads for a paid search engine.

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- darreninthenet@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You’re accusing Cory Doctorow, the guy who invented the phrase “enshittification”, of making a blog post that’s really an advert…? Really???
  
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  - pop@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    You’re accusing Cory Doctorow, the guy who invented the phrase “enshittification”
    
    wow, what a genius. he’s going to solve world hunger next. he’s totally not “milking” nerds who think that word is the best thing since sliced bread.
    
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- drislands@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That’s Cory Doctorow, my guy. He’s not making an ad.
  
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- redditron_2000_4@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You are paying to use Google, with all your data feeding their advertising machine.
  
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  - revisable677@feddit.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Using SearXNG and DuckDuckGo though, but the piece does read a LOT like an ad. Even the writing style is making me suspicious.
    
    That’s just my impression, not trying to convince anyone
    
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NutWrench@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Google has also gotten lazy and is prioritizing YouTube and Reddit results, instead of webcrawler results.

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- RagingRobot@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The reddit results are annoying because you can only see 2 related comments without logging in. I hate that shit. I look for stack overflow links
  
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  - Zak@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Change the URL to old.reddit.com.
    
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YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Kagi uses Google’s search engine?? I didn’t know that, I thought they’d created their own search engine. If Google blocks Searx, why don’t they block Kagi?

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- tempest@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Kagi pays Google for API access. They also query other sources of data as well as their own index.
  
  help.kagi.com/kagi/…/search-sources.html#external
  
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- redcalcium@lemmy.institute ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I suspect most of their subscription money went to google pocket. Google charges a lot of money to access their search api, about $5/1000 queries.
  
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Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I genuinely think Google’s success is its own undoing.

If everybody had carried on making sites in the same way they did when Google came out, the results would still be good.

Bit they didn’t. There’s gold in them thar hills, and now SEO and generated bullshit are a way to make money, while Google’s algorithms seem easy to game if you have the resources to do so.

There’s like a hundred large companies doing this, and if you blocked all their sites in the Google results it’d give results similar to Kagi and other flavour of the month search engines.

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Deebster@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m still very happy with the experience, especially the UX and customisation options, and they’re developing new features fast. Not always successfully at first, e.g. the recent integration of WolframAlpha isn’t entirely a step forward (mostly because they’re not displaying the extra context that WA shows that lets you know when it’s answering the wrong question).

I think overall most people are very happy, as shown by the frequent recommendations on here (so much so that someone on Lemmy was telling everyone it must be astroturfing).

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- 0xD@infosec.pub ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m convinced a lot of it is astroturfing. It’s just too perfect and consistent, with the perfect answers for everything and just the right amount of fear mongering.
  
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gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve used it for quite a while now, so I can safely say it’s not just the honeymoon effect. There are certain specific searches that I will prefer Google, for example if I know an exact string from a document that I’m looking for. Google still has a larger search base so if they’re is information that can only be found in one or two places, Google is more likely to work. Image and video search on KAGI is still a little bit finicky. I might use Google, DDG, or Bing for those (Actually, DDG is just a front end for Bing in this regard). For everything else, when I’m looking for information or answers to questions, Kagi is the best there is.

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- RGB3x3@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’ve recently started using Qwant since Mozilla has partnered with them and I’ve been pretty satisfied so far.
  
  What Google has over every other search engine is local results. There’s just no getting around how much useful data Google has on every business in the world.
  
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FunkPhenomenon@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
good or not, it’s what people associate “searching” with - much as how Kleenex is just tissue paper but you dont really hear others asking for off brand tissues.

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- Kraiden@kbin.run ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I take your point, and agree when it comes to Google
  
  But here's rabbit hole for anyone interested. That brand name being synonymous with the product thing is actually fairly regional.
  
  We just call them tissues here. I think you can get Kleenex brand here, but I don't think anybody cares about the brand of tissue. There's a particular kind that has some kind of aloe Vera extract which is all I'll use if I'm sick, but I don't even know what brand they are.
  
  On the flip side, we call marker pens Biros, and where I grew up we called them Khokis
  
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  - Entropywins@kbin.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    We call it a sleeve where I come from...
    
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  - BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yep, it’s regional.
    
    Where I grew up only a few people used “kleenex”, and I never hear it where I live now.
    
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dep@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I thought Kagi shut down

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- FutileRecipe@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  but if I’m going to pay for search it’s something like Perplexity.
  
  Generative AI search engine Perplexity, which claims to be a Google competitor and recently snagged a $73.6 million Series B funding from investors like Jeff Bezos, is going to start selling ads, the company told ADWEEK…“Advertising was always part of how we’re going to build a great business,” said Shevelenko.
  
  adweek.com/…/gen-ai-search-engine-perplexity-has-…
  
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Pringles@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Been using kagi for several months now and can’t imagine going back. The only thing I still use google for is when I want to shop for a specific product after having used kagi to do my homework. I’m sure I can configure a filter for that, but haven’t gotten around to that yet.

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