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Comment by kelnos

7 months ago

Strange, I rarely don't find what I need on Kagi, and when I do and fall back to Google, the results there are no more helpful.

6 comments

kelnos

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dingnuts  7 months ago

this is my experience as well. sometimes I accidentally search Google and I find it extremely annoying and the results to be demonstrably worse most of the time

the example I like to show people is searching "how to fix a leaky faucet"

Kagi shows helpful answers and videos from sites like This Old House.

Google shows ads for plumbers near me. If I had wanted a plumber, I would've searched for that.

  • mining  7 months ago

    Searching "how to fix a leaky faucet" on Google turned up the page from "This Old House" immediately (top 3 results, top 2 were wikiHow and a YouTube video that seemed OK at a glance).

    I'm not sure why my personal results are often so much better than posts like this one whenever I do the experiment - maybe it's based on location?

    • dpkirchner  7 months ago

      Do you use an ad blocker? I can confirm the results: plumber ads that extend below the fold, followed by one useful article from Home Depot, then a useless "people also ask" blob of links, some videos (likely useful, faucets aren't complex), and another useless "people also" blob.

      I am in the US, if that matters.

      1 reply →

  • fuzztester  7 months ago

    >>the example I like to show people is searching "how to fix a leaky faucet"

    >Kagi shows helpful answers and videos from sites like This Old House.

    >Google shows ads for plumbers near me. If I had wanted a plumber, I would've searched for that.

    JFC.

    This illustrates one of my biggest complaints about current Google (which has been the case for sometime):

    They make their software behave as though they know what I (you) want, better than I do (you do).

    So they give you the results they think you need, rather than those you really want.

    Infuriating squared.

    And idiots cubed.

    • fuzztester  7 months ago

      >So they give you the results they think you need, rather than those you really want.

      Correction: I should say, their stupid machine learning algorithms think you need.