[aabaker99]

I just signed up and tried it a little bit and I like what I see so far. I find myself increasingly frustrated with Google search results for a particular use case: searching for documentation. For example, today's work had me thinking about Python's datetime and timedelta and I wanted a reference on what functions are available. With Google I am annoyed with results from geeksforgeeks.org and freecodecamp.com because they are not reference materials and generally only cover some basic use cases. In Google, those two sites are in the top four results. In Kagi, they are not. Instead, there is a longer-form blog post from guru99.com, stack overflow, and the official Python documentation.

Now, I will admit that for this particular query Kagi and Google results are pretty close. But my general experience is that when I search in Google I find that I have to look farther down the search results to look past the blogspam to find the authoritative reference.

[VWWHFSfQ]

The blogspam has made Google and Bing/DDG almost completely unusable for technical searches.

Go search for something like "postgres cte" and you won't find anything useful until probably halfway down the page. And maybe not at all.

[ryandrake]

"Do you want to learn about blogspam? If so, you are on the right page. You will learn about blogspam here. One of the most major things about blogspam is that it exists on the Internet. You just learned that blogspam exists on the Internet. In this way, you have become educated about blogspam.

Now that you know about blogspam, we'll move on to the next topic: How to find blogspam. It's actually very easy to find blogspam. You are on the right page if you want to learn about finding blogspam..."

[pjc50]

This killed the blogosphere, and will kill any decentralized system that becomes popular unless they can do something extremely clever.

Instead of a dark forest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest) think of the outer internet as a fake forest. If you wander off the beaten path - the same dozen sites that everyone uses and complains about - you wander into an endless, trackless zone of fakes all of which are ultimately trying to sell you something.

[probablypower]

Thanks for the fun analogy. It is right on the money.

Made me imagine the invention of the internet as the big bang, and that now we are watching the expansion of e-space as all the useful bodies rush away from one another and the light-years of space between them is filled by a vacuum of usefulness.

Maybe one day the search for intelligent life in space will be easier than the search for intelligent life on the internet.

[dpkirchner]

This is also giving me Microsoft "independent advisor" vibes.

[hi41]

That’s funny. Is that how pages go up in rank? Make many references to the same word and make circular arguments?!

[booleandilemma]

I searched for that (without the quotes) and this was the 2nd result:

https://www.postgresqltutorial.com/postgresql-tutorial/postg...

The first result was the official documentation.

What else are you expecting?

[projektfu]

Google search always gives lousy results, except when you have complained about it, in which case people who check your work always get optimal results. /s

[dylan604]

I see this from time to time myself where someone points out how bad the results are, but different results for me when trying the example. However, there are certain other things that I have searched for myself that absolutely resulted in crap results from SEO/blogspam type of results. So I know 100% it happens.

What I'm wondering is how much of your recognized fingerprint influences the results? What causes results to be different from user to user using the same search query?

[mda]

Typical. Some people always complain about Google search results nowadays but I very rarely see actual bad examples.

[seaman1921]

he was expecting nobody to check his BS

[stevewatson301]

What kind of results do you get when you Google the term? For me, the PostgreSQL documentation[1] came out on the top.

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/queries-with.html

[andirk]

For HTML, CSS, Javascript, and browser APIs, I simply add "mdn" to the search to guarantee I get the official-ish MDN docs. From there, I can dive in to W3C specs, etc if needed.

Those training wheel search results are annoying but they're highly ranked probably because most people like and use them.

[overlisted]

There are also Chrome and Firefox extensions to remove results from W3Schools specifically

[Semaphor]

For me, #1 is the official documentation, #2 is a decent looking tutorial, #3 has a slightly better page on google, #4 is a clear kagi winner.

Neither of them offers bad results, but we are talking about google, it makes no sense to give example searches without saying what results you receive as Google is so heavily personalized.

Kagi does personalization, but it’s explicit. You yourself decide the region to search in (my default is international, though there are quick bangs to search in other regions), and you can up- or downrank domains, as well as block them completely.

[holoduke]

Always add the keyword 'forum' to your search terms. It filters out most of the crap.

[paulmd]

"hackernews post, deeply knowledgeable, FAANG dayjob, startups with VC funding, increased conversion rates, trending on artstation"

[adzm]

Maybe it's just me but search results for that were very helpful in my case. Official documentation, stack overflow questions, an informative blog about cte gotchas, all within the top half of results.

[mda]

Just Googled it, the first result is official postgres documentation, second is a tutorial, what exactly you get / expect when you search for it?

[nottorp]

I just duckduckgoed it and 2nd and 3rd results are tutorial spam. 2nd is geeksforgeeks...

[freediver]

Here are the results for that query on Kagi if you want to compare:

https://kagi.com/search?q=postgres+cte&r=us&sh=5-n8GUySt5qmx...

[Calamitous]

Another nice thing about Kagi is that you can eliminate domains from your search results. Obvious content farms are pretty easy to spot and remove.

[AndroidKitKat]

My favorite feature is being able to boost a certain domain up in the the results (or even pin it if you really would like). I often search for different Pokemon and prefer the information that a site like Serebii.net gives me over something like Bulbapedia.

[Larrikin]

Is there any reason why? I'm not heavy into the game anymore but usually when I'm searching Pokemon Bulbapedia has the information I want.

[AndroidKitKat]

I think it's just because I prefer the organization of the information, giving you things like the type chart up front and center.

It's also the site I used more as a kid so there's probably some loyalty bias.

[nmstoker]

Yes, eliminating and boosting favoured sites are both excellent feathers on Kagi

[davemp]

That should be a good signal for ranking algorithms as well with the subscription price disincentivizing bots.