this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
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Before Kagi I was running self hosted Searx (technically searxng as it keeps getting forked) which is a search aggregator. It runs the same search over multiple engines then lists the results based on which ones come up the most often. I like Searx but it's slow (takes a few seconds to retrieve all results from search engines and build the page). Kagi does the same but is very fast.
I'm not sure the search results are generally better with Kagi but it does have some great features. E.g. you can block, lower, raise, or pin certain sites. So I block all the Pinterest domains so they don't show up in results, and I pin Wikipedia so if it's in the results it's always at the top.
Raise and lower just bump up or down that site's importance.
There are also some AI things like summarising pages and one I recently discovered is you can type in a question and get a chatGPT-like response (but it's not using chatGPT).
I think the main reason I use it is not that it's better but that I like to support projects that are trying to do things different, I want a world to exist where a search engine can sustain itself without ads (since I'm gonna block them anyway). I'm lucky that the cost isn't an issue for me, so I see this as a way to support the goal.
If you want to test it out, you can sign up for 100 free searches (and can then also have a look around all the customisation options), but if you're already a pretty skilled searcher I wouldn't expect it to be significantly better.
That's a bit disappointing. I probably do have good search skills but the way search engines are going it takes more effort these days to get the same level of results, so I was aspiring for something that could help if I ever got to the point I could afford it.
Next time I'm doing a big project I'll give the 100 free searches a whirl.
I was hoping it was more like vivisimo/clusty which used to clump results in patterns, or old version altavista which used to dredge up 10x more results than other engines.
Good on you for supporting tech goals and stuff. That's really cool.
They have lenses, which is a way of searching under specific categories (For example, "Recipes" or "Programming"). But this is kinda the opposite, it's not grouping results by category but rather filtering by category.
You could check out searxng as well. I ran it on a server but it's the kind of thing you could probably run locally on your laptop (and perhaps that would be best, so you can always access it without running a service for the world). I haven't tried it, but you could probably do it using Docker Desktop. It should all be pretty light weight and run on pretty much anything. Could be a fun project!
Thanks, I will bookmark that!
I'm learning so much it stuff by lurking around here! You guys are single handedly catching me up to this decade.
Haha I learn lots here too! The self-hosted communities are about the only niche thing that is mainstream here!
You also teach me about slugs and stuff ๐
Ha ha that's right I forgot about your tiger slug! Did that work out for you as a pet or did it roam away?
Still there, last I checked. Doesn't seem to be getting any bigger, though. I feel a little not like the lady in the Roald Dahl book Esio Trot thinking her tortoise is growing too slow.