[kwlug-disc] Ducky vs Google and Bing

[Doug Moen]

This is an in depth review of Kagi web search:
   https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-kagi-search/

A list of specialized search engines, from the same site:
   https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/13-alternative-search-engines-that-find-what-google-cant/

One thing the ad-based search engines won't show me are honest product reviews from indie blog posts and forums. Putting 'review' in a search means show me ads and e-commerce sites for buying the product I want a review of.
But there are ways to search within forums:
  !r is a reddit search in Duck Duck Go
  https://boardreader.com/ -- forum and bulletin board search
  Kagi forum search (under advanced search/lenses)
My initial impression is that Kagi forum search is way better than the first 2 in the list. I tried 'lenovo thinkpad t14 gen 3'.
  
Searching code within in software forges like github:
  !gh -- github search in DDG -- finds repositories, not code
  https://searchcode.com/ -- weak
  grep.app -- pretty good code search
  Kagi Programming lens
The Kagi Programming lens includes results from !gh and grep.app, as well as searching forums focused on programming. It's pretty good since the result you want might come from a source file on github but it might also be in stackexchange.

I'm really impressed with Kagi so far.

Microsoft announced plans to incorporate ChatGPT tech from OpenAI into Bing.
Kagi has a machine learning division called Kagi.ai, and here's a blog post from 2019 saying that Kagi is working on the same idea <https://kagi.ai/last-mile-for-web-search.html>.  I don't see any recent updates though, and they don't have a vault full of money to shower on OpenAI. Just as with Google, there is also the question of whether the AI gives you the answer you want or whether the AI is using your question to formulate a response that will get you to spend money. I already feel like I am living in a society of people with little actual agency, because their emotions are manipulated and controlled by commercial interests via online media. GPT in the hands of big tech isn't going to improve the situation.

Doug

On Tue, Jan 3, 2023, at 7:54 PM, Doug Moen wrote:
> I use Duck Duck Go, but the default search results are often not great.
> When that happens, I append !s which turns it into a Startpage search, 
> which often has better results (they are google results, but you have 
> more privacy).
>
> I use a variety of ! modifiers in DDG searches, which keep me on the 
> platform. Also, DDG sometimes has better results than Google, so I 
> can't just rely on Startpage. Hence my two engine strategy.
>
> Although Google results can be better than DDG results, the result I 
> want is just as often buried under a load of spam. By coincidence, the 
> spam happens to provide much better monetization to google (via ads and 
> analytics) than the indie web page I am looking for. It is as if Google 
> ranks monetization higher than relevance in their search criteria. 
>
> If that hypothesis about Google were true, then a search engine that 
> doesn't make its money by monetizing the search results could produce 
> much better results, just by ranking results purely by relevance. Let's 
> test that hypothesis.
>
> I am currently testing kagi.com, which does not earn any money from 
> advertising, and has a good looking privacy policy: 
> https://kagi.com/privacy
>
> The search results are generally good, on par with the best of DDG or 
> google so far, and occasionally much better than DDG or Google.
>
> Kagi duplicates DDG's best features (like ! operators), and offers some 
> intriguing features that no one else does. There are lots of ways to 
> filter and prioritize results. You can block sites you don't like, or 
> boost/lower the ranking of sites. This works because you have to log in 
> to Kagi in order to use it, so you have state. In order to have full 
> access with unlimited searches, you need to pay a monthly fee. Because 
> that's how the site is funded (no advertising). Paying money is 
> required if you want to be the customer, rather than be the product. I 
> haven't subscribed for the pay service yet.
>
> Here's a test case. There's a new restaurant in Waterloo called Flame 
> Indian Cuisine, and they have their own web site. If I search for
>     flame indian cuisine waterloo
> then DDG gets it in 1, Kagi in 2, Qwant in 2, Startpage and Google get 
> it in 9.
> By coincidence, their web page contains no google advertising or 
> analytics. So Google is definitely not always the best, but they are a 
> good backup if DDG fails. I haven't tested Qwant much -- I got 
> inconsistent results last year or whenever I tried it. But hey, all the 
> ad-based engines are inconsistent.
>
> Oh, and if you want people to find your web site, you better pay 
> protection money to Google.
>
> Doug.
>
> On Tue, Jan 3, 2023, at 2:57 PM, jekerr at sdf.org wrote:
>> Hello everyone
>> Lately I have not been too happy with duck duck go. Is it just me, or are
>> we getting lots of off topic hits that we do not want? Ducky can't find my
>> work homepage at all but Google  and Bing puts it at the top of my search
>> for "Wellington Law Associaton".
>> Nice that allegedly Ducky does not track me, but I did not know (until 10
>> minutes ago) that they get their results from Bing.
>>
>> What is your go to search engine?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> John
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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