this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Thank you for bringing up Kagi, I had never heard of it before. An intriguing idea for sure and I am not averse to paying for searches, but as a serial Google-fu practitioner $10/month for 1000 searches (1.5c per search after) seems quite steep to me. Some days I swear that would last me 24 hours at most. I need to start tracking that I think.
I do however applaud the seeming transparency on their website. It may or may not be for me, but if they really plan to operate how they lay out on their website, it truly is a breath of fresh air and I wish them luck.
Comparing the pricing on a "search value" basis is compelling, but I'll be damned if I can't find concrete details on what they actually do differently. Just looks like a lot of marketing-speak.
E.g., do they have humans reviewing the results? Or is it just LLM crap? Because if it's more AI bullshit, they can fuck right off to where the Titanic and Titan lay.
Just seeing this for the first time also, but one of the features they list is it looks like you can "block or boost" domains in your search results. I miss when Google let you block domains for results, so this would be a killer feature for me. I don't mind paying, but just the pricing seems a bit odd. I could see myself paying $5 per month for unlimited searches, not sure if 300 or 1000 is enough, $25 per month for unlimited is crazy.
Does boolean not do that for you? E.g., "-domain.com?"
After using a search engine with this functionality, I quickly realised how many domains I never wanted to see again, and how many I valued. Google has been promoting garbage domains for so many years now because they pay better than the quality sites. The algorithm goes both ways, as in, "show me more," and, "show me less." To make the bad ones disappear, you'd need a notepad next to your Google window with a list of dozens of domains you don't like to append to every query you make. Unfortunately Google doesn't offer you the ability to positively bias domains because they'd earn less. So you'll still see the first few pages of garbage, depending on your search.
Comparing search engines is not easy. I went down the rabbit hole and concluded Kagi is the best right now. A search engine has one primary function. Everything else is icing. That is to find the best result as fast as possible. As their incentive is to find you the best result, not the result which pays Google the most. I find relevant results more often, and much less spam. That's the value proposition.
They also have great features like the ability to block and rank domains, and a kind of filter feature which focuses on certain kinds of information you're looking for.
As for ranking, no search engine uses humans to rank results. There are billions more pages going online every day. It would take the entire world's population working on nothing but that to accomplish. So the magic is in the algorithm and how data sources are combined. As above, Kagi's motivation is to provide good results, and I think they're succeeding. I'm sure Google could provide amazing results to us, but that's not profitable. Of course, humans review the algorithms and test them and improve them, and Kagi appears very good at this.
FYI they have a $5 tier which includes 300 searches a month, and this is enough to cover most users. You might be surprised if you actually track your habits over time. You could start on that tier and upgrade if it's insufficient.