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Comment by akkartik | Hacker News Reader

I'd pay $10 in a heartbeat if Kagi reliably used all my search keywords. But they don't, and I don't understand it. Just use all my words except stop words. I took the trouble to type them in.

I don't care if your coverage isn't as good as Google in its heyday. "0 search results" should be a mark of pride now.

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It’s highly annoying to me as well. I’m still paying for now, but since they started (I was using them in Beta), they’ve been slowly using towards the mainstream "implicit" behavior and away from "explicit" behavior. I now see myself quoting terms far more often, which has other disadvantages (no typo correction, diacritics becoming relevant, etc.).

It’s the same for regional searches. Used to be (until Dec 2023) I could search for an ambiguous term (e.g. a product name that’s the same in English and German) with "!de" for German regional search and get German results. Now that’s impossible as most results will be the same English pages I’d get with my normal international or US region.

Overall just not a fan of the direction they are moving in (which seems to be DDG with personalization and no ads, but no more expert search)

Did you raise it to the Kagi feedback forum [1] already? Based on Kagi's release notes [2] they regularly fix things like this.

[1] https://kagifeedback.org/

[2] https://kagi.com/changelog

The issue thread about regional search has been open since January 2024 [0], with a lot of talk but no change at all. Some people like the change because they apparently always search in regional mode and want all results there. I posted several examples of my issues there.

I also asked on discord about the dropping of search terms and was just told to use verbatim search (quotes) if I don’t want dropped terms.

[0]: https://kagifeedback.org/d/3022-ideas-for-improving-localint...

I find it interesting that another comment states that they love Kagi exactly because Kagi uses all their search terms as opposed to Google. Not doubting your experience here, but I wonder how those experiences can differ so much.

That comment you refer to confused me, as I have a similar experience as OP (posted in a sibling comment).

Say something positive about kagi, receive karma.

Say something negative about google, receive karma.

No place with this kind of system should be relied on for veracious claims.

It's not a system, you are just describing sentiment, people generally like Kagi and generally dislike Google.

> people generally like Kagi and generally dislike Google

The reason the words "on hacker news" is missing from that statement is the karma system. I am describing echo chambers.

No way that people on a tech-focused forum like a technology designed for power users! Must be an echo chamber!

Hey! Thanks for asking what I would do to make it better. First, of course, the karma system has to go - scoring can still exist without being visible and therefore pressuring people to be performative. In addition to that, I would adjust the rankings to show not only the most popular posts but also some of the most controversial ones (controversy being defined as least agreement among voters). These are changes that will alienate many, however, and unlikely to be incorporated by a platform that amount to a content marketing tool for an investment group.

I agree. Perhaps you could help me add examples to this Feedback thread? https://kagifeedback.org/d/5354-kagi-ignores-search-terms

I've added a few, but I worry that adding more is counterproductive. Maybe it would help them prioritize if more people chimed in.

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