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.

  • ggt@lemmy.fmhy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    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
    • Rick@thesimplecorner.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      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.

      • cwagner@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        To understand the pricing, you need to know how they source the results. While they use their own index, that’s very small. Every search is an API request to both Google and Bing. And they pay for those.

          • cwagner@discuss.tchncs.de
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            No, it’s far more than that. They don’t just bought give you those results, they do their own ranking. The results are far better than either. They also honor stuff like phrase search properly.

            There downranking for spammy sites and tracker heavy sites, you can personalize results (block boost or penalize domains) and filter better than other search engines.

      • ggt@lemmy.fmhy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        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.

    • Pumpkin@sh.itjust.worksOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      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@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        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

      • ggt@lemmy.fmhy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

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

    • DengueDucky@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      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”.

    • smoke_bird@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      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.

    • pineapple@lemmy.pineapplemachine.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      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.

    • bit@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

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

    • Nina@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      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.