Comment by perdomon

1 year ago

Can someone make a case for Kagi? I'm using Google + Claude for all my websearch needs. I don't feel like there's a gap there, but maybe that's because I've never experienced anything better and can't imagine it?

I do value privacy, but I wouldn't pay extra for more private search results. I might pay extra for __better__ search results, but that's hard to measure.

Just curious if anyone has had a legitimately great experience with this product and can communicate its benefits. Bonus points if you're in software dev.

21 comments

perdomon

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mayneack  1 year ago

For me the killer kagi feature is that I can manually up and down weight domains in results. I can "pin" and always get wikipedia results or "block" and never get pintrest or raise or lower as needed. Brave search has a similar feature, but they only seem to support "block" not "lower", which is what I use a lot more often.

https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard

  • perdomon  1 year ago

    This is the exact sort of QOL feature that could convert me. I get tired of seeing the same recycled AI listicles for certain search genres, and it sounds like Kagi could help me manage that for my preferences.

  • stephen_cagle  1 year ago

    Ditto, for me is that I can take the damn geekforgeeks and facebook to "lower". Raise the python official docs since that is most of the time what I want.

esafak  1 year ago

If you don't immediately notice the difference between Kagi's and Google's results, Kagi is not for you.

  • trvr  1 year ago

    This is so true. I've been on Kagi since March 2024. On the occasion that I find myself on Google on someone else's computer, I find it completely unusable from a search result perspective. It's all just junk. Kagi has me as a paying customer forever.

furyofantares  1 year ago

If you can't imagine a gap then I think it might not be for you.

I tried kagi after finally getting sick of some of my google results. Kagi was able to deliver on some of those results.

It's not like, shockingly better results. I do think they're better on average, but I'm not sure.

However, in the cases where I couldn't find what I was looking for on google and could on kagi, well, that's a binary result. I'll take the success and not the failure.

I was surprised by how much better I found the UI. That's actually the thing that sold me on the subscription to begin with. Going in, I would not have expected UI to sell me on such a thing.

I have since customized it somewhat; there are sites I usually really like results from and they are upranked, and sites I don't care for which are downranked. I've felt like this has lead to even better experience, but I haven't gone back to google to compare.

  • perdomon  1 year ago

    Very interesting experience. Thanks for sharing. I’m a sucker for good UX/UI, and it sounds like the product is legitimately useful long-term. I wonder how well it integrates into Firefox/Chrome, since I see extensions for both browsers. I’ll check it out!

cube2222  1 year ago

Other than the things others mentioned, with the ultimate plan you can use Claude with Kagi web-search, which is not something that the Claude web app supports, I believe.

  • perdomon  1 year ago

    That’s interesting — Claude WITH web search. Like Claude makes suggestions about search terms? Or maybe helps to navigate the results? I’m struggling to picture how google search is a 2-“person” job

    • 4lteredBeast  1 year ago

      If you have the Ultimate plan, you also get access to Kagi Assistant, which gives you access to Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral, Google, Meta, Alibaba, Amazon, and Deepseek engines, and there is a toggle to give them web access or not.

      Claude does not have native web access and this has been my only real issue with Claude. I've just converted to Kagi to test, and having Claude with web access is a huge QoL upgrade.

mulderc  1 year ago

For me, Kagi felt like a godsend as my Google searches had become polluted, and I had to dig way deeper in the search results to get anything decent. They also have an AI assistant that gives you access to all the major AI models and integrates with their search in a way that I have found very useful.

I would recommend at least giving it a try to see if you notice a difference. For my job, the monthly fee more than pays for itself

cmehdy  1 year ago

Auto filter for sources, downrank sources you dislike, sort results by recency, have an engine that actually respects what country or language you're trying to search into, and finally present results visually the way you want them. It's worth trying to use it actively for a month or so, and you'll see if you need it or not. I would not to back to google even if Google paid me.

  • hedora  1 year ago

    I recently ran a search on Google. There were zero results on the first page. It was 100% ads. (15” MacBook).

    I tried a different search on iPhone to be sure. The first result was on the 3rd screen.

    When did they start doing that? How do people use that crap?

    • Mashimo  1 year ago

      > 15” MacBook

      I just tried it on Duck Duck Go and the first result was from Apple.com

      On google I get 3 rows of "Products" but the first real result is also apple.com

      1 reply →

jabroni_salad  1 year ago

Here is a case for 'not google':

https://i.imgur.com/PQNm1Yc.png

I want a search engine to return useful results. Right now, google has been captured by revenue generating results. It wouldn't be so bad if useful results were making money, but that doesn't seem to be the case.