We’re exploring Kagi as a potential topic for a future episode. Anyone using it as their search engine? Would love to hear thoughts!
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I haven’t used it, but every day I think, “gosh, as a web professional, I should probably pay for and support alternative web search,” so colour me intrigued.
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After thinking about it for a year, I created an account a couple of weeks ago. I’ll give it a test run and then decide if I want to pay for it or not. I’m curious to hear your thoughts about it. But I have to admit that Perplexity has become my go to search engine. I use it a lot. I’ll probably end up a subscriber.
I wrote about trying it for a full month and deciding not to continue:
Been using it for the past few months!
My only real issue is the lack of local metadata. Half of my searches look like “canadian tire hours” but Kagi doesn’t show summarized results, so it takes me a few more clicks than Google to find out that yes, Canadian Tire is open.
I am looking forward to my kids starting to use the Internet so that I can take advantage of Kagi for kids:
Meanwhile, being able to invoke LLM/Perplexity-style results by appending a ? to any query is awesome.
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No, but I did see this controversy a while back:
What does this mean Ryan ? Does this mean that Kagi will serve results like Perplexity ?
I’ve been using it as my main search engine for 18 months and wouldn’t switch back to anything else.
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Why? What keeps you there?
See Quick Answer:
An area I’d be interested in is how the engine works when working on locked down computers. My work locks down my computer such that I can’t install software or extensions. Kagi provides a manual configuration for Chrome but I haven’t tried it out yet. I’d be curious to hear the comparison and differences.
My wife and I pay for the family plan, and love it. The results are perfect; there’s no spam; and it’s fast.
I’ve played with most search engines and weighed their pros and cons, but the biggest feature of Kagi is that it lets the search engine “disappear”.
With other tools, I’m either navigating things that crowd the top of the results page (shopping suggestions, maps, images, etc) or a lackluster set of results means I need to craft my search string more precisely.
With Kagi, I just type what I need into the box and it’s there, with no fuss.
Looking at my settings, it looks like the Kagi default ranking isnearly sufficient for meI. I’ve pinned wikipedia and a specific documentation website, and I’ve “prioritized” reddit. But nothing else! No custom downranking or hiding of sites. Kagi takes care of the junk for me.
It’s funny that it takes tech-literate folk to think to change their search engine beyond the default, because Kagi feels like such a good default for user who want something that works “out of the box”. I need to do so much less navigating and futzing around in Kagi that I do with other paid software products.
Configuring the Safari extension was the hardest part!
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I started subscribing after doing the 30 day (or was it 300 search?) trial that they offered a month or two back. It’s amazing. You get real results, and don’t have to dig through all the useless crap that you see in Google (or even in DuckDuckGo, which was my default before).
Plus you get access through them to a whole bunch of different AI models, which is nice for testing things out (and remaining privacy conscious)
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I’ve been using it for several months. I’m supporting something other than Google or Bing for one positive. And as far as results, it is more direct and less junky. They have a bunch of features I haven’t even explored yet.
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I’ve tried to use it twice, but (as far as I remember) two things put me off:
- Having to install the safari extension (since it’s not one of the built in search engine options) annoyed me, for reasons I cannot remember.
- The search results for local stuff weren’t good, and google was better.
I gave Kagi a trial but, as others have said, the local results are terrible. I mainly use Google to find local services at home and when traveling, and the local results were very poor compared to Google. I consistently couldn’t find what I want and had to switch back whenever l needed to find any local services. At that point I gave up!
I tried it and liked it a lot! Then I stumbled into this post: lori's blog - Why I Lost Faith in Kagi
IDK it gave me a weird feeling, so I bailed.
I work as an architectural historian, so I spend a huge amount of my time trawling the depths of the internet for obscure information. I pay for Kagi because it makes that process slightly less unpleasant. Ive found that it does a better job than Google or DDG at surfacing what I want at the top of the list. For example, if I’m searching for an obscure book by title, google and ddg tend to prioritize websites with possibly relevant results. Kagi will put an archive.org link right at the top. It’s like google and ddg bend over backwards to give something else because I can’t possibly want just the book. Whether that’s because Kagi is ‘dumber,’ I don’t know, but it makes my job ever so slightly easier to just have search results rather than extreme-algorithmic prioritization.
I also really like the lenses feature. Being able to just search for PDFs helps a lot (you’d be surprised how much information only exists in a pdf hosted on a forgotten server in a church basement). Again, just makes my job a little easier. I’ve found the other lenses to be nice but not groundbreaking.
I’m paying for the $10/mo plan which is juussstttt at the threshold of being worth it. Any more and I’d reconsider. I’m also not using the assistant feature much as I already pay for ChatGPT and have Gemini deep research access.
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I appreciate that the author of that post wrote it up, and followed up with the reaction from Kagi.
My overall read is that they purchased a product that they didn’t want and so they stopped paying for it. That’s cool! The drama I don’t really care about. I find my life is better when I do not pay close attention to the peculiarities of CEOs.
I’m willing to pay for Kagi because:
- I do not want to be advertised to, ever
- I do not want my kids to be advertised to, ever
- I do not want my search engine algorithm to be incentivized by ads and ad revenue
They’ve built that already, so I’m happy to pay for it. I’m open to alternatives but AFAICT none of the others — Ecosia, Brave, ??? — are as good. Would be curious about other reviews though.
Meanwhile, the power user features of Kagi are what make it interesting from an MPU perspective, so I’m keen to hear more about how others make the most of the options Kagi offers.
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I just renewed my second year with Kagi, and I have no intention of going back or changing anytime soon.
I haven’t used many advanced features of Kagi, my reasoning for using it is the same as @ryanjamurphy in for paying for Kagi.
I used DDG prior to Kagi and always found myself second guessing the results or reverting back to Google when searches came up short. In just over a year with Kagi that has never happened.
My needs are basic, but I’m fortunate enough to be able to afford using a quality product that respects my privacy and doesn’t treat me as a product. That’s enough for me.
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