I always feel really grotty about evangelising for products, but I switched to Kagi about six months ago and it really is a better experience. In almost all cases, the search results are as good as or better than Google, and I don't have to scroll through an increasing number of misleading ads to see them. I'm a happy customer.
When I first switched, I would often click the button to run the search on google for queries that weren't immediately giving me what I wanted (rather than go through the next few pages of results), but invariably I wouldn't find it there either. I think that's what gave me confidence that Kagi's results were at least as trustworthy as anything else. (to compare, I did the same thing in my multiple abortive attempts to switch to DDG and it always came up wanting).
Unfortunately, Kagi works with Russian companies and pays them money, which in my book is a no-no. I do not want any of my money to contribute to the Russian economy in any way, because I know what is happening to people in Ukraine.
(I was a Kagi subscriber, no more, because of this)
This thread's responses are a classic whataboutism. Instead of addressing this particular issue, people address others. I support motion for Kagi to drop Yandex integration, because of the reasons cited.
I took a look at the linked block list[0]. There's a lot of junk in it, but I'm also seeing a lot of sites that have, in my opinion, pretty decent content.
My approach with Kagi is just to block SEO spam when it shows up in my results, but I don't think good SEO means it's a bad site with no useful results.
Yo, I'll spend a bit of time splitting the lists up.
Obviously, there are a number of websites in there outside the 16 Companies from the linked article in my post, and the Kagi top blocked domains that I've added myself as I scroll through search results.
I understand that my taste may not be for everybody so will make it clearer in the post and give a bit more options.
I thought their maps integration was pretty bad compared to Google, as well as the information widgets. It stressed me, I was always thinking that somethin isn't right and that I'm to blame, because so many love it so much over Google.
Maybe not a popular sentiment here on HN but I cancelled my Kagi subscription (9+ months) just recently. Increasingly, most of my queries/search have been through LLMs and Google search is just fine (and even better for restaurants, places, and the like). I don't think the improved search experience is worth the subscription anymore.
Can someone who uses both Kagi and Perplexity Pro tell me how they compare or decide which to use?
I committed to Perplexity so I can have access to most models I care about easily, deep research, and better online search. I’m happy with Perplexity, but I’ve been Kagi curious for years and now I’m even less sure how I’d approach using it.
I really enjoy Kagi for search. It is a significantly better experience. I do still use Google Maps for looking up local things, and I kind of wish Kagi would redirect me there instead of their own maps implementation, which I just cannot imagine will ever be on par.
Happy Kagi user for many many months now. The only thing I fall back to Google for are local results (specifically local business search - like restaurants). I still have an Android phone, use Gmail, Drive, Docs, Maps, etc - but Kagi has almost entirely replaced my standard Google search results.
And it's making me do something crazy. It's so good that I am even suggesting it to non-technical friends and family. 99% of them look at my like I'm crazy when I say it's a paid search engine, but hey - I'm trying.
Kagi completely replaced Google for me except for location-based "food near me" type searches.
I understand location/place results particularly with reviews are a really tough thing to do as a company, but it is one really helpful thing thing Google search still hasn't destroyed yet.
As a side note I find Kagi Translate often far superior to Google too
I tried to give Kagi a fair shot by using it for a few months. I loved a lot of features, especially the boost/block lists. But I always felt the responses were way too slow for something I use that much. I benchmarked a handful of queries and confirmed they were consistently ~3x slower than Google for normal searches and 5-10x slower for image searches on my home network. I’m sure there are many factors that play into that, so maybe the reason I haven’t seen others complain about the speed has just been that the problem is unique to my network. But ultimately I opted to switch back to Google for my daily driver and just use Kagi for specific lenses.
DDG has been solid for me, and I rarely use g! anymore. I certainly can find better things to do with a hundred dollars than spend it on something I don't need and that other services do just as well for free.
Awesome post, love Kagi and learned some new things. One small gripe tho: publishing a "block list" and implying its for SEO sites, but then including sites like Facebook, Medium, WebMD, NyPost, Quora, TikTok, etc. is just goofy. "SEO" to me means "overly-long articles on niche topics that provide bad info just to sell ads", not "news sites I don't like"!
Search engines are getting squeezed out by AI for me.
Kagi's search results are less polluted by SEO trash than Google, but there's still a non-zero amount of it. When I try to answer a question using Kagi (or any search engine these days) I end up feeling frustrated: there's so much information, and none of it is useful.
On the other hand, ChatGPT filters all SEO spam out for me, and typically does a decent job of answering my questions. I can follow the references it provides in its answer to verify what it says, and also learn more from external websites. It's a better user experience, with a better success rate for me.
Looking at my Kagi usage stats, I guess I'm not actually using it less from month to month (which I would have guessed I was). But, subjectively it still feels like I'm depending on it less for finding information on the web. I've given up on it for a lot of use cases, or it's no longer my first choice. I think my main use case is bang operators at this point, and that's where the numbers come from.
Been an Early Adopter, joined January of 2023 and I have never looked back or paused my monthly. I'm currently running with the Ultimate package which is good value for the $25/month price tag.
Beyond content to stay with Kagi, I hate shilling for products but this is one I would encourage anyone to try out. They have a free tier so you can feel it out for yourself, and even for $5/month you can still have a pretty good experience.
I use it for every search need, much like with Google back around 2012, as long as you know how to leverage the Search Engine you can almost find anything! Kagi is what Google should have been, sure it has some small short-comings but the overall experience is so good that it's easy to see past the silly things sometimes the SE pulls.
So is it truly the case that I can now pay for Kagi without my searches being associated to my account? And I dont mean by scouts pledge, but I recall reading something about anonymous crypto tokens?
As a refinement on this, if you're not comfortable blocking these results entirely, Kagi allows you to lower their relevance in your results rather than simply blocking outright.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 59.1 ms ] thread>I’ve been a happy Kagi user since early 2023
I was an unhappy Kagi user when I learnt it relied on Russian back ends fueling a war. Now I'm not a user anymore.
When I first switched, I would often click the button to run the search on google for queries that weren't immediately giving me what I wanted (rather than go through the next few pages of results), but invariably I wouldn't find it there either. I think that's what gave me confidence that Kagi's results were at least as trustworthy as anything else. (to compare, I did the same thing in my multiple abortive attempts to switch to DDG and it always came up wanting).
(I was a Kagi subscriber, no more, because of this)
My approach with Kagi is just to block SEO spam when it shows up in my results, but I don't think good SEO means it's a bad site with no useful results.
[0] https://paste.flamedfury.com/flamedfury-kagi-block-list
Obviously, there are a number of websites in there outside the 16 Companies from the linked article in my post, and the Kagi top blocked domains that I've added myself as I scroll through search results.
I understand that my taste may not be for everybody so will make it clearer in the post and give a bit more options.
Sound good?
I committed to Perplexity so I can have access to most models I care about easily, deep research, and better online search. I’m happy with Perplexity, but I’ve been Kagi curious for years and now I’m even less sure how I’d approach using it.
And it's making me do something crazy. It's so good that I am even suggesting it to non-technical friends and family. 99% of them look at my like I'm crazy when I say it's a paid search engine, but hey - I'm trying.
I also find myself using the "quick answer" feature a lot too. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/quick-answer.html
I understand location/place results particularly with reviews are a really tough thing to do as a company, but it is one really helpful thing thing Google search still hasn't destroyed yet.
As a side note I find Kagi Translate often far superior to Google too
Sometimes kagi will take up to ~5 seconds to give me results.
Kagi's search results are less polluted by SEO trash than Google, but there's still a non-zero amount of it. When I try to answer a question using Kagi (or any search engine these days) I end up feeling frustrated: there's so much information, and none of it is useful.
On the other hand, ChatGPT filters all SEO spam out for me, and typically does a decent job of answering my questions. I can follow the references it provides in its answer to verify what it says, and also learn more from external websites. It's a better user experience, with a better success rate for me.
Looking at my Kagi usage stats, I guess I'm not actually using it less from month to month (which I would have guessed I was). But, subjectively it still feels like I'm depending on it less for finding information on the web. I've given up on it for a lot of use cases, or it's no longer my first choice. I think my main use case is bang operators at this point, and that's where the numbers come from.
Beyond content to stay with Kagi, I hate shilling for products but this is one I would encourage anyone to try out. They have a free tier so you can feel it out for yourself, and even for $5/month you can still have a pretty good experience.
I use it for every search need, much like with Google back around 2012, as long as you know how to leverage the Search Engine you can almost find anything! Kagi is what Google should have been, sure it has some small short-comings but the overall experience is so good that it's easy to see past the silly things sometimes the SE pulls.
I'd consider getting an account if so.