I find it pretty interesting that kagi is rated as Terrible search engine, even ChatGPT preforms better.
I was skeptical at first though let me tell you, Kagi is so much better. I get exact search terms, which is immensely useful as a programmer, rather than providing results for what Google thinks I want to search for. It’s also really, really nice not seeing ads as search results anymore, ad blocker or no ad blocker.
Is it as comprehensive as Google search? It meets about 95-96% of my needs. I still use Google very infrequently for some really obscure domain specific searches if Kagi doesn’t find anything useful, though that’s getting rarer and rarer.
It’s also easy to block AI generated sites that pop up providing just enough likeness, but really are regurgitated AI trash, or are ‘Wikipedia clones’.
I have no financial interest in Kagi, other than paying to use it. It has certainly been worth it for me.
I really liked Kagi at first, especially since I use it mainly for programming as well, but recently I feel like the quality has gone downhill. Right around the time they integrated the Brave stuff I’ve noticed a significant amount of me having to scroll down past the usual Google-like fluff results before getting to actually relevant information. It’s a little sad to see because when I first used it, it was so good now it basically feels like a skinned Google-lite at this point. I’m still a customer but only because I haven’t found a good alternative yet.
Did you try Marginalia?
it meets your criteria+ it’s opensource.
So this whole post is an advertisement, then.
Personal recommendations are not really advertisements.
Friendly reminder to go use searxng
I am happy with kagi, so… But I abondoned google a long time ago and basically switched from DuckDuckGo to Kagi
Are people actually using ChatGPT as a search engine?
I use it as an answer engine. Queries like: what’s that css property for xyz, or please summarize this email, or give me the top 25 most commonly used color words in English in a json schema like this.
All of that could be found with a normal search engine but I’d have to work harder and sort through a lot of trash along the way.
ChatGPT just understands what I’m looking for almost no matter how poorly worded my query is and just answers the question.
please summarize this email
As long as you realize they store and use that email.
I am both joking and being serious when I say this: the engine doesn’t matter, it’s a skill issue.
It’s not 2010 anymore. Google has removed or ignores most regex that used to make it work well. It’s not a skill issue. You can’t make the queries you used to be able to do.
Recently I saw a meme or post or tweet that I can’t find anymore. The gist was: In the 2000s, search engines were arcane tools which could only be used competently by few select people. Nowadays this has changed. Not because people have gotten smarter, but because search engines were dumbed down so much that it’s not possible to use them competently anymore.
Right? I feel the same about much of software design as well. Been a computer nerd my whole life and it’s never been more difficult to use them competently than it currently is. Incredibly frustrating.
