Thank you Kagi folk that hang out here.
It may be because I've been able to customize my domain raise/demote/block list, so my version might not be "stock search results", but that's kind of the point...
I see the domains relative to what I know generally has what I like...Google could have implemented this in their last decade... But they really don't care if you need to come back to their search results 3-4 times clicking through the next few pages because that's ad revenue and there's no competition
Kagi doesn’t have search history of any of their users, so they can randomize them at best, which makes no sense.
Kagi has exclusivity deals with trillion-dollar corporations and a monopoly on search?
Kagi has 30k subscribers, it is totally uninteresting to these AI results farms. This is just one example, but I hope you see my point. I cannot see Kagi beginning to compare to Google.
I think what OP meant was that he dislikes kagi’s search algorithm on a specific ground that also happens to apply to Google. The way it’s phrased is pure trolling though, or clickbait if you prefer.
They don't save the search results as history, this is simply a short-term cache.
Kagi is different from Google because they have a financial incentive to not serve you AI junk websites with optimized SEO. They're not targeted by SEO companies / optimizers.. and even if they were, unlike Google, you can simply ban the domains. If that domain pops up a lot because it's just an SEO optimized content stealing site, you never have to see it again.
I expect kagi will eventually care about the age of domains and the amount of people that are marking these as junk domains, as part of their search results.. because they have a financial incentive to make us happy, whereas Google has a financial incentive to make us click through multiple websites and revisit their search page, and make additional searches with different words, so that they can serve more advertisements
> Additionally, a recent EU ruling presents a significant opportunity for Kagi. Google is now required to include any search engine that meets specific criteria, such as having an app with over 5,000 installs, in the default list for Android and Chrome.
Because the blog mention that Google will be forced to propose kagi in the default search engine list given 5k installs, but even with it installed I cannot set kagi as my search engine on that widget.
On the contrary if I install duckduckgo or bing, I can choose one of them to replace Google in that widget.
EDIT: android itself talks about the 5k limit for the "choice screen" during initial setup [0], but there is no mention of how the list is populated afterwards
I understand that currently the app does not replace it, but once Kagi has more than 5000 Android installs and we submit a request to be included in choice screen, and given that privilege it would do.
I have the Kagi app on my iPhone, but just so it can be an extension in Safari. In a perfect world, I would be able to go into the settings, add a custom search engine, and be done with it. No app or extension needed. Then when it hits a threshold it can be added as an easy option for people to pick from a list.
Because otherwise you can’t use it as a default search engine on the platform, because it doesn’t allow it. Same for iOS. They had to write an app to intercept search requests and redirect to Kagi.
Personally, this is one of the reasons I don’t like android anymore. You have to tweak it endlessly to make it halfway work. The platform’s management load is too much. I don’t want to manage and mangle another computer in my pocket. It wastes too much time.
I tend to like how Firefox does it, where any search the user goes to, there is an option to add it as a search option and set it as the default. This should be the standard all browsers use. Junking up a phone with apps just for what is ultimately a setting change isn’t ideal.
The hacks Kagi has to do for Safari is annoying. They’ve gone so far as to make their own browser to make it better, though I’m sure that’s not their only reason. I’ve had some issues with the Safari extension over the years. I hope Apple changes their approach on this.
Happy to see that custom bangs work (eg a discourse forum I visit), but eventually I'd like to specify how far along the path to "snap".
I'd like my @javadoc to hit `site:docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/23/docs/api/` instead of the current `site:docs.oracle.com`.
[1]: https://github.com/kagisearch/bangs?tab=readme-ov-file#bang-...
I don’t use any LLM features of Kagi, and it’s not hindered in any way.
IMO, as they improve their (own/in-house) indexes, I think they’ll be able to build more features on top of standard Kagi search.
We have a an AI integration philosophy that we have been following since day one.
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/ai-philosophy.html
The primary guideline of that philosophy is that any AI feature is opt-in and on-demand rather than being pushed down the user. So to characterize our efforts as you did, can at best be described as doing disservice to reality. Why the need for that?
The problem is that Google ruined its reputation by showing completely inaccurate results when it started displaying AI-generated results.
What would be super awesome, imo, would be if I could assign "some sites" as a short code, then snaps that.
So for instance, I might put html, phoenix, CSS, and tailwind spec/references all as one grouping, and then I can search "select drop-down @phoenix" - and search for that across all references (so I can see the html spec alongside the tailwind and phoenix docs)
For example I have a custom QT lens that only includes results from [*.qt.io, *.stackoverflow.com, *.github.com...] and a !qt bang pointing to it at https://kagi.com/search?q=%s&l=8
(you'll have to change the l= id to point at your lens)
1. The site has a lot of content worth parsing such that it's worthwhile to limit your search to only that site.
2. The site itself has a garbage search functionality that you would not want to use instead
3. You need to be searching that site frequently enough that there is a need to shorthand it instead of typing out the long form syntax
4. The site must have content that is generally picked up best by a traditional search indexer e.g. mostly be text based in what you want to search
There are relatively few sites like that in existence. Probably if I mentioned the above requirements to anyone well versed in internet, Reddit would be the immediate first example out of anyone's mouth. Perhaps there are a few other sites that might meet the mark (Stackoverflow and Github come to mind in my example, or possibly other social media giants heavier in text based content as well. Or Hacker News, ofc). But most other large sites' search story is better enough that even then I would probably not naturally use this feature instead.
My app https://multi-launch.leftium.com already does that! (Except with buttons; bang triggers coming soon...) Note you need to give browser permissions to open pop-ups, otherwise multiple tabs cannot be opened.
- Docs/examples: https://mm.leftium.com/doc
- All buttons share the (text) input at the top. ENTER inside the input triggers the first blue button.
- Blue buttons launch all dark gray links in their category.
- Gray buttons launch individual links.
- Light gray buttons are excluded from the launch group (but they can be manually launched.)
Recently I realized bangs and launch buttons are just bookmarks. So I'm currently combining these concepts so you can launch bookmarks or groups of bookmarks with a bang trigger. (As well as take notes for a URL!)
---
- The very first iteration of this idea launched multiple images searches at the same time: https://is.leftium.com/
- Now implemented as a launch group: https://mm.leftium.com/?p=C4S2BsFMAIF5oEQEkC2BDA5jAypNAnAYwA...
See also the settings for personalized results - block useless domains from even appearing.
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/settings/personalized-results.htm...
I wish there were Alfred alternatives for other operating systems
I previously made a custom bang for reddit to do exactly this. I guess I can delete that now and do the same thing on every site without all the setup.
Kagi is so nice. They give me the power to do these things on my own, while adding it in natively so over time less and less setup is actually needed.
Kagi is one of the few subscription I don’t think about cancelling on a weekly basis.
@r vs site:reddit.com
After a few tries, I also find the first more intuitive.
Unfortunately, having both search engines easily available led me to discover as much as I like Kagi I just use google more, despite its ads. Google is faster to get answers to simple questions (it usually answers them on the results page, without another click) and shows more results, although you need an extension for the latter.
More info on how to set up these shortcuts here: https://superuser.com/a/1806652
Kagi has a quick answer feature: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/quick-answer.html
If you add a question mark to the end of your query, it uses an LLM to generate an answer using the first few results (with citations to the sources).
The new snaps addition is something else: it gives you Kagi search results, but limited to that website. It’s the same as adding site:stackoverflow.com to your search query, but with an easier syntax (same syntax as bangs, but with an @ instead of an exclamation mark).
Yes.
The worst that can happen is the better thing goes away again, and your payment goes away too.
There are multiple bang providers, often defining their own conflicting internal bang triggers. So bang scopes would let you specify which provider to use.
I guess I'll have to use another character... Maybe `$` for $cope
WTF is this marketing bullshit?! Default Google Search is useless now and I'm rooting for Kagi, but this "exclusive" untruth is decidedly NOT the way to "win".
Google's "site:<domain>" search has been around for years: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/monitor-debug/sear...
Not related, DuckDuckGo's "bangs" https://duckduckgo.com/bangs which has, likewise, been around for years.
*sigh*
The Kagi specific part is /easily/ searching a site in Kagi.
The whole point here is that they are extending the already supported bangs[1] to search the domain with "@", thus if "!r" exists to redirect to Reddit's search, you can use @r to search Reddit within Kagi.
Of course I could type "site:Reddit.com" that's what I've been doing for years, including on Kagi, but easily doing that with @<bang> seems exclusive to Kagi.
[1] Kagi maintains an open source list of supported bangs here, you can even do a PR to add even more: https://github.com/kagisearch/bangs
If you're saying a different syntax makes something exclusive, I have some highly non-performant macros to sell you.
@ lsm
and a long one
site:long-site-naem-with-a-ttpo