Hacker News Reader

Kagi has under 35k paying members, about half of which are on HN.

I wouldn't say it's either of the two, but more that the Venn diagram of people willing to pay for search and HN users looks like a Mastercard logo.

I'm pretty sure it is just ratio of points/time which matters. Number of comments has negative influence on rankings if number of comments >>> points. Sometimes truth is just boring.

I can only assume that a number of factors play into the ranking. Probably aspects you can't see (how many people followed through to the link at Kagi.com? How many people loaded up the comments for the submission?). Upvotes and comments are almost certainly not the only factors in ranking on HN.

It’s a mix of time on HN and points. Which means articles which are of interest to the people here make it up rather fast.

There isn’t really anything secret to HN. It’s not unbiased, but it’s easy to see which posts are “sponsored” as in the case of job postings. Obviously Kagi will rank well since it’s very popular with HN, but any “startup” tech company which has new features will typically rank high here.

> how many people followed through to the link at Kagi.com

AFAIK HN does not track link clicks.