The best way to improve Google search results is to stop and use Kagi[0]. Seriously. If you are reading this article and these comments then you must be somewhat interested in search results. Do yourself (and the search world) a favor and subscribe.
I’m not saying this is happening (I’m not saying anyone is a shill). It’s just making me feel a little “hmm” about it.
Another common response is
>Your table is wrong. I tried these queries on Kagi and got Good results for the queries [but phrase much more strongly]
I'm not sure why people feel so strongly about Kagi but, all of these kinds of responses so far have come from Kagi users. No one has gotten good results for the tire, transistor, or snow queries (note, again, that this is not a query looking for a daily forecast, as clearly implied by the "winter 2023" in the query), nor are the results for the other queries very good if you don't have an ad blocker. I suppose it's possible that the next person who tells me this actually has good results, but that seems fairly unlikely given the zero percent correctness rate so far.
For example, one user claimed that the results were all good, but they pinned GitHub results and only ran the queries for which you'd get a good result on GitHub. This is actually worse than you get if you use Google or Bing and write good queries since you'll get noise in your results when GitHub is the wrong place to search. Of course you make a similar claim that Bing is amazing is you write non-naive queries, so it's curious that so many Kagi users are angrily writing me about this and no Google or Bing users. Kagi appears to have tapped into the same vein that Tesla and Apple have managed to tap into, where users become incensed that someone is criticizing something they love and then write nonsensical defenses of their favorite product, which bodes well for Kagi. I've gotten comments like this from not just one Kagi user, but many.
The testing methodology is also odd, looking specifically for yt-dlp when asking for "download youtube video", when the web based downloaders that most of the big engines turn up on top make more sense for the average user, both due to not having to install a command line tool and due to not necessarily being on a device the tool can be installed on. I've often used the top Kagi result, and it has worked fine, yet has been labeled as scammy by the evaluator. IIRC that site also ranks high in Google's results. For adblock they expect specifically ublock origin, and consider ABP to not count despite it also being a very popular blocker.
Them complaining about why it's only Kagi users reaching out to him also seems unnecessarily aggressive, eg I've found their article through you, in the context of Kagi, so if I were to comment, it'd obviously be in that context.
However, how likely is this article to be brought up in the context of Bing, Google, ChatGPT or DDG, where there are many more carefully thought out and less dismissive comparisons and discussions out there?
In a sense it's targeted advertising, since HN users are very likely to be power users who care about a paid search engine for one reason or another. But it's still organic in the sense that the articles posted are ultimately just the regular search engine discourse or otherwise not content specifically crafted for the purpose of advertisement.
However, when I'm trying to find some archaic technical solutions that I know is out there on the web somewhere, Google just can't really do the job any more at all. Exact search doesn't even work! Kagi's filters DO work, and the ability to black list stackoverflow scrapers cuts out a lot of the useless noise. It's at those times when Kagi earns its place.
I have long hated that “free with ads” is the first and only business model anyone thinks can work on the internet, so I want to support companies that are willing to push back against that. Ads in search create a conflict of interest that I don’t like. Ads in most products create a conflict of interest I don’t like.
I pay for YouTube Premium for a similar ideological reason. I want to support the business model that doesn’t rely on showing me ads. In a perfect world, this would mean that the features and algorithms of YouTube would change to prioritize me as a user, rather than pushing constant consumption, but with Google its baby steps.
There's only "free, with ads" and "paid, with ads eventually".
https://www.amazonforum.com/s/question/0D54P000079nP9wSAE/ho...
Edit: but I'm glad Google is noticing their results are getting to be shit.
They don't show your history.
> the ad profile Google builds on you is probably more damaging to your privacy than a photo of the entire contents of your wallet.
I can take measures to prevent Google from linking together a full profile. It sucks that it's necessary, but once you log in it's effectively game over. And your payment info has enough stable identifiers that it's trivial to link you to pretty much anything else you've paid for.
---
The core misconception here seems to be the idea that there is such a thing as a honest for-profit corporation.
> The core misconception here seems to be the idea that there is such a thing as a honest for-profit corporation.
And I would say there's degrees. Even if all companies eventually slouch into a google-like organization, at least you can jump on the bandwagon until that happens and find another when it does. And maybe none of the wagons are headed to a strict privacy, user controlled data, and free-software utopia, but maybe not all of them are headed to Gomorrah.
You are the one claiming that Kagi is somehow special, trustworthy, and immune to the same influences that drags down everyone else.
> I see lots of promises, but very little proof
Yet you trust google and any company that might do business with google? This view is some sort of mind game you're playing alone.
My point is that Kagi's business model requires more trust in Kagi than Google's requires in Google.
From Kagi Settings page, search history toggle:
Save My Search History
Currently this option can not be turned on. Kagi does not save any searches by default. In the future we may add features that will utilize your search history and then we will allow you to enable this.
I encourage readers to think through the privacy practice implications of firms that may see your information "first party", and firms that make their money leveraging your information among third parties and the entire adtech ecosystem.