this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
50 points (98.1% liked)

Asklemmy

43970 readers
724 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I'll go first. I've used a lot of search engines, I used duckduckgo for quite some time but found their search results kinda bad. I'm currently using ecosia the search results are similar to ddg's but at least I'm planting trees, so there's that.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Kagi. Yes, it's paid and the pricing structure is really meh, but:

  • Actual privacy
  • No BS like with DDG
  • AI features (like a "quick answer" feature that's really useful)
  • Has its own index along with others
  • Search results are great, probably better than DDG's
  • "Lenses" (basically narrow results by a set of sites)
  • Devs are pretty cool
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

For some reason the thought of a paid search engine has never even crossed by mind before. I've been using DDG but this has peaked my curiosity. Thank you.

Edit: The pricing is... very... meh.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It is very meh. But I think if you're able to, it's well worth the price. Just don't get the standard plan. That one is god awful.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's so worth it.

[–] pumpkin 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I didn't know it was privacy focused or that they were building their own index, that's really cool. Do you think it's worth the money?

[–] zarquon 3 points 1 year ago

It's only a few bucks a month. I think so.

The only thing I don't like is needing to be logged in to search. That always feels like a huge invasion of privacy. The at least claim that they don't log search contents though

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Bit biased cause I've had it for a while and have a 'legacy plan'. But even without that, absolutely.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Love Kagi. I switched and never had any reason to use Google again. Its that good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I want to give it a try but it's hard to justify the cost with limited searches. I don't want to have to keep track of how many times I've searched or second guess if I "really need to search for that".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yep, same here. Heard about it on HNN and figured "why the fuck not?" After using dgg and being disappointed in Google's results for a while. I've thoroughly been impressed with Kagi's results.

May sound like a shill but I'm always happy when something really convinces me from my initial impressions. I happily pay for it now. I work in IT so relevant and accurate results make me happy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Kagi. Yes, it’s paid and the pricing structure is really meh, but:

Huh. I hadn't heard of this one before, but I think I'm going to have to try it out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Kagi is absolutely wonderful. Highly recommend giving it ago. Gives me better results than google while having a fair privacy policy

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I've been using Kagi for a few months now and I love it. When I think about how much of my life revolves around accurate information, the price is negligible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I was using DuckDuckGo and it was giving me pretty 'eh' results, only marginally better than google on the surface level, but both weren't really usable for deep older searches. (and ddg starting to add sus ads/promoted) Brave is better, but Kagi has been fantastic when I've really needed to find something specific, technical, or very old. I think the best way to come about the pricing structure and limited search results is that I think it's not supposed to be your only search engine from then on. There are times when you need what kagi gives in terms of producing quality and relevant results, and times you just wanna search "[company name] reviews/is a scam?" that using kagi wouldn't serve you better than anything else, so it's more of a tool that you bring out when you aren't finding what you need with free search engines. On it's own page it doesn't try and oversell you on it, they admit that the majority of people don't need paid search most of the time.

I haven't approached if it's an early netflix thing where you could split the bill with others for one login/family plan, that might make it more feasible.