Comment by Hannes@feddit.org on Is it just me or do all search engines feel soooo bad these days?

I suspect that this is the direct result of AI generated content just overwhelming any real content.

I tried ddg, google, bing, quant, and none of them really help me find information I want these days.

Perplexity seems to work but I don’t like the idea of AI giving me “facts” since they are mostly based on other AI posts

ETA: someone suggested SearXNG and after using it a bit it seems to be much better compared to ddg and the rest.

I’m very happy with kagi at the moment. Just crossed one year using it as my main search engine last week and don’t see why I would go back.

Unfortunately they started to play with AI too :-(

It was disabled by default on my account I think

Is it really $108/year good though for a single person (based on the tier that makes sense for me)? Just curious what other search engines you’ve used or tried and what features set it apart to make it worth spending the money on.

That really depends on your use case and how valuable web search is for your daily life.

I’ve personally tried Google, Bing, DDG, Brave search, and ChatGPT. Kagi is consistently able to find what I’m searching for more quickly and accurately than anything else, which has been very valuable for me in my personal and professional life.

It’s easily worth the cost in result quality and time saving for me personally, but that doesn’t mean the same will apply to you or anyone else.

As far as stand out features, there aren’t really any that I can think of. It just gives me the results I’m looking for without any bullshit to wade through.

It’s the first one I’ve paid for. And it is that much better than the free ones I used before imho.

I’ve been using Kagi for about a month now and it’s been working well for me

My blocks

Edit: hm. I seem to have replied to the wrong comment.

I don’t remember any specifics, but I think I heard there were some privacy concerns?

Then again, there seem to be privacy concerns about pretty much anything so might not be that bad…

Yeah, lots of opinions, a few facts: one of the discussions.

It was not even the emails. I tried to duckgo it and only found this controversy (which was new to me). What I saw was a specific qute, possibly on topic of privacy or something adjecent which just made me go “nope!”

The concerns are about the credit card you use to pay.

The argument is that they can associate the card with your searches.

As far as I know they don’t keep search data. I’m personally happy with them

That’s what’s kept me from using it, although I very much like the idea of paying for a good service. I would love to see them figure out a way to avoid accounts.

I think this might be it. There were also some statements by the CEO I think which didn’t exactly inspire confidencenin their company - but again, I don’t remember the details unfortunately

Never heard any issues with Privacy, but I’ve heard issues about them using Brave search Results as part of their results.

If i remember right, it wasn’t just using brave, but including a referral id in brave searches. It wasn’t intended, and they fixed it, so all good with me.

Same. Even the ai stuff is helpful instead of annyoing.

Same. Using Kagi feels like surfing the old web. The first thing I did was block all Pinterest results. That alone made every search golden. 😂

I never got Pinterest results on Kagi to begin with

You’re not the only one. They have a leaderboard and the top 7 results are various Pinterest domains.

Leaderboard here for anyone curious

Yep everyone blocking Pinterest.

Also the most prioritized website is Wikipedia. Guess everyone wants facts in the the age of hallucinatory AI

I hate Pinterest lol, best thing about Kagi is being able to block whole sites and it remembers your preferences. I may come back to Kagi but I didn’t feel like funding their AI features development. Now Im using Searx and 4get cause they’re free.

Having to signup and login to a search engines sounds like an annoying hassle

It is. And it’s also terrible for privacy, but people do it with google as well.

You pay instead of seeing ads, so they need the account. Remembers you, though, so you just login once. Plus they have a solution for incognito/private windows too.

I really like it, has some cool features.

You can create a search-link that includes your token so you can also use it in incognito or if you are logged out for some reason.

It’s a very minor annoyance and well worth it in my opinion.

I was searching for a book quote for over a year. I tried every search engine, tried changing the terms, checking back several times every few weeks or so, but couldn’t find anything even close. I tried kagi and it was literally the very first result on my very first search.

I haven’t looked back and have never had an issue finding what I’m searching for since.

Signing up and logging in isn’t a problem imo. I wouldn’t even mind if I had to pay for searches, but I’m not going to make it a subscription service. Unless they add an option to do something like buy 1000 searches that never expire, its not something I’d considered. I do think they beat out competitors like google with their results pretty consistently though based on the trial.

I’m not gonna subscription my heated car seats but search is a service that costs an ongoing amount to provide. The subscription isn’t significant, it’s $5 a month for 300 searches (or $10 for unlimited).

I know we’ve been conditioned to expect search for free, but if we want to get away from the “the user is the product” model then I think it’s a good thing to have a subscription to a service that has ongoing costs to provide.

Up to 300 searches. I’m not asking for free. Just for it to not be a subscription. Just sell me 300 searches.

Yes but then how do they get that sweet sweet recurring revenue

By having a good product, so people want to use it and need to top-up on new searches regularly as a result?

Ah right, I get you. I wonder if they have considered this. Pretty sure their free/demo tier is 100 searches not confined to a time period so presumably the platform could handle that model.

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Is it just me or do all search engines feel soooo bad these days?

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