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Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month | Kagi Blog (blog.kagi.com)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by HKayn@dormi.zone to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Kagi is a paid alternative to ad-supported search engines like Google and DuckDuckGo. It has recently revised its pricing model, reducing the cost for a plan with unmetered searches from $25 per month to $10.

Kagi boasts the following (and more) features:

Blocking or boosting specific domains in your search results
"Lenses", which are individual setting profiles (e.g. region locks, domain whitelists) that can be applied to search queries
All of the Bangs that DuckDuckGo has (e.g. type "!yt" in front of your query to immediately search on youtube.com)
Universal Summarizer, which works with any website, PDF document, YouTube video and more

This blog post goes into full details about Kagi's capabilities.

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[-] Deebster@lemmyrs.org 28 points 11 months ago

I've been using Kagi for two months and I'm loving it - the ability to control your results is amazing. Some things I do:

remove or downrate things like pinterest and w3schools from my results
rewrite www.reddit.com/* to old.reddit.com/*
rewrite to send some sources through archive.today or similar to break paywalls
rewrite to set the language of some sites that GeoIP my location but ignore my language headers

Also, having keyboard controls - like Google used to have - is so welcome, and their AI summarisation tools are actually useful too.

[-] Joe@infosec.pub 0 points 11 months ago

How do you rewrite paywalled sites to archive.today?

[-] Deebster@lemmyrs.org 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

https://www.example.com/(.*)|https://archive.today/search/?q=https://www.example.com/$1

This takes you to the search results so it's an extra click to get to the actual page.

My actual regex is a bit more complicated since it deals with multiple domains but that's the gist.

[-] ripcord@kbin.social 16 points 11 months ago

Hmm. I might pay $30/year but this still seems much too expensive for me.

[-] MrGerrit@feddit.nl 13 points 11 months ago

Okay, I'm going to ask it seriously: how good is it for searching porn?

[-] Steve@communick.news 9 points 11 months ago

This is great. Been using it for 5-6 months now. Have no need to go back to Neva, Duck Duck Go, Google, or Altavista.

[-] maniajack@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

What would you say are your top 2-3 reasons you like it?

[-] sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.works 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The results aren't always perfect, but its more of fighting with SEO.

With DDG I'd often have to switch back to Google for a query. Now when switching from Kagi to Google when I can't find a result the results are usually worse. For a niche topic I'm vaguely familiar with I'll usually do ChatGPT so I can get the proper search terms and then find what I want on Kagi.

It tends to improve the more you adjust your personalized weights. I was pretty lazy with that the first month and found it slightly subpar compared with Google. Now it seems way better.

Lots of UI customizations if you don't like a particular feature. As an example I don't like their Listicles feature (groups top X type of results). Mostly because that content is poor quality. Disabling the feature just removes those crap results that would go in the widget which is a bonus for me.

The ability to switch lenses (topic contexts) that you can customize those result weights for instead of one global context Google assigns you.

I wish they had a better solution for anonymous searching. There is a pay as you go API I could use with a second account funded from cleaned bitcoin. Would be great if I could use the website though from a pay as you go funded source.

[-] steal_your_face@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 months ago

Supposedly they don’t log searches or IP addresses.

[-] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 1 points 11 months ago

Burner email, Monero, and Trocador.app. mission accomplished.

[-] sir_reginald@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

not at all. with that, you achieve pseudonymity, because even if they can't know who you are, they can tie every search you do to the very same account, your "pseudonym".

with DuckDuckgo (and I'm not a DDG fan to be honest) I can just change my IP and clear browser local storage to make several anonymous searches.

with kagi, even if you take the inconvenience of creating a new account each month, all your monthly searches are tied to a single account.

[-] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 2 points 11 months ago

not at all. with that, you achieve pseudonymity, because even if they can't know who you are, they can tie every search you do to the very same account, your "pseudonym".

Good point

with kagi, even if you take the inconvenience of creating a new account each month, all your monthly searches are tied to a single account.

Not as far as i can tell. If you used a new burner email every time and paid through trocador with monero your payments could be tied back to the instant exchange, but no farther since monero uses ring signatures.

[-] sir_reginald@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

Not as far as i can tell. If you used a new burner email every time and paid through trocador with monero your payments could be tied back to the instant exchange, but no farther since monero uses ring signatures.

I didn't mean to your real identity (if you've managed to do payment well enough and never leak your IP while using it), I meant that even if you create a new pseudonym every month, all your monthly searches are tied to a single pseudonym, which can reveal a lot about an individual.

[-] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 2 points 11 months ago

Ah, i understand now. They "say" they dont record search history.

From their Privacy & Terms page:

Searches are anonymous and private to you. Kagi does not log and associate searches with an account.

We do not log or store your IP address. Your IP address is used only temporarily when enriching location/maps searches, and is not shared with any other party.

We do not use any web browser analytics or other frontend telemetry.

We do not display any ads, or have any first-party or third-party tracking in service of ads.

But they totally could

[-] HKayn@dormi.zone 2 points 11 months ago

For me personally, Neeva's death is what got me to Kagi in the first place.

[-] Steve@communick.news 2 points 11 months ago

Same. Turns out it was much better than Neva the whole time!

[-] platoose@feddit.uk 8 points 11 months ago

nice - unlimited Kagi was good value at $25 for power users but at $10 it's good value for everyone, even if they never dig around in the settings

my favourite feature is raising / lowering results, as others have mentioned, but I also use the AI summarizer quite often

[-] nix@merv.news 5 points 11 months ago

The summarizer for youtube videos is pretty sweet. Tutorials on youtube now work as text tutorials

[-] reev@sh.itjust.works 5 points 11 months ago

Oh the strict search limits were prohibiting me before, I'll get right on that!

[-] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 4 points 11 months ago

Very cool. I joined on September 4th and am still on my 100 free search trial. I think the $5 plan will be just fine for me and i get to pay in crypto. Win win.

[-] whiskers@lemmings.world 3 points 11 months ago

Why choose this over DuckDuckGo? Genuine question as it has minimal tracking and is free.

[-] HKayn@dormi.zone 4 points 11 months ago

At the core, you're making a decision between a paid service and an ad-supported one.

Going deeper, Kagi has a lot of features over DuckDuckGo:

In addition to inheriting DDG's bangs, it also allows you to create your own.
The ability to boost and block specific domains in search results
Access to the Universal Summarizer, which can summarize websites, YouTube videos and PDF documents

and a few more.

[-] MDZA@feddit.uk 3 points 11 months ago

This is great news. Been using Kagi for just over a month now, and it’s made my browsing experience a lot better.

Had recently upgraded to the pro package but glad to see much better value offered to Kagi customers across the board.

[-] sky@codesink.io 2 points 11 months ago

I've not come anywhere near the 1500/mo on my duo plan, but not having to think about it at all is nice. Kagi is soooo good.

[-] topinambour_rex@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

How precise is it ? If I search something, is it going to replace it by what it thinks I want ?

What about the logs ? Is there any logs, if yes how long they keep them ?

Where are located the servers ? And where are from the investors?

Your post sounds and looks like an ad. Especially when it points to the product's blog.

[-] HKayn@dormi.zone 6 points 11 months ago

How precise is it? If I search something, is it going to replace it by what it thinks I want?

You can always create an account and use the freei trial. For me personally, the search results have always been what I was looking for.

What about the logs? Is there any logs, if yes how long they keep them?

There are no logs.

Where are located the servers?

Kagi has multiple servers around the globe, and will connect you to the closest one to you.

And where are from the investors?

Kagi's investors are mainly regular Kagi users: https://blog.kagi.com/safe-round

Your post sounds and looks like an ad.

I wanted to use the text box to provide some info about what Kagi actually is, since the title alone doesn't explain. What should I have done differently in your opinion?

[-] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 11 months ago

Great news! I was always getting nervously close to my 1000 every month, which made me use bangs more. Now I can just type in my query and not worry about it.

[-] 601error@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

This service sounds perfect for me.

EDIT: Just finished the thread. In bed and the sleep-promoting substances are kicking in, but I set a reminder to sign up tomorrow.

this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023

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