Checking Out Kagi Search
I have been using DuckDuckGo go for a couple of years for the most part without having to revert to Google. DDG has been pretty good, but I feel like the results of maybe declined a bit.
Recently, I saw Kagi Search mentioned on hacker news and wanted to check it out. They claim no tracking and no ads. They offer about a hundred free searches or something like that, then it’s $10 a month for unlimited.
It might seem odd to want to pay to use a search engine that was always free, but to me, it makes tons of sense. They need to make money somehow, even if it’s only to cover their expenses. Google makes my by advertising. SEO spam sites use Google’s advertising. It’s not in Google’s financial interest to move cleaner, more useful sites up in the rankings.
By paying that reasonable fee for something I will use every day, I am the customer and not the product. At least in theory, Kagi will improve the product for search and not showing ads since they have none.
In my bit of testing, it has done better than Google at finding what I want and not the scammy stuff that it thinks I want that have nothing at all to do with the original query.
I like the lenses feature where you can focus on specific types of things. Protip: If you’re for how to do something obscure, searching forums is usually a great way to find it.