this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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[–] capt_wolf@lemmy.world 61 points 6 months ago (28 children)

This sort of thing is why Google's monopoly on the internet is so dangerous.

[–] NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth 43 points 6 months ago (25 children)

Because they are making so that we get less results that are just cheating the system to show up at the top?

SEO is a bastardization of a useful tool, solely meant to game the system artificially

[–] grue@lemmy.world 29 points 6 months ago (9 children)

SEO is only feasible in the first place because we have one dominant search engine instead of a bunch of equally-prominent ones with different algorithms that would need to be optimized for differently (and maybe even mutually-exclusively).

[–] NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Copy paste.

There are a ton of them, the problem is none of them are as good as google.

I hear there are good pay ones, though I have never tried one.

I can usually find what I need on google pretty damn quick, although I have seen the end page more than once

[–] Undaunted@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I found search results surprisingly bad when I had to use is on another computer. I use Kagi (and yes it costs money but I rather pay that than pay with my data) which gives me way more accurate results. Google might have been the best search engine until a few years ago but from my experience it is not anymore.

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Kagi is just Google's index with fancy features and filtering on top. They include a few other sources but for regular search it's almost always going to be Google's index providing the base results.

[–] Undaunted@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)
[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Wow, looks like they just updated that page and removed all references to their external indexes. Very shady stuff, Kagi. I'd go as far as to say they are now lying by omission.

The archived version of that page from March does open with (emphasis mine):

Our data includes anonymized API calls to traditional search indexes like Google, Mojeek and Yandex, specialized search engines like Marginalia, and sources of vertical information like Apple, Wikipedia, Open Meteo, and other APIs.

Then it goes on to say:

Kagi's indexes provide unique results that help you discover non-commercial websites and "small web" discussions surrounding a particular topic.


Now reading between the lines, and more importantly knowing how much sheer capital goes into indexing the entire web, I can say with much certainty that Kagi is probably powered mostly by Google since it and Bing (which they aren't using) are basically the only meaningful players in the space. Yandex is for the Russosphere, and Mojeek is nice but nowhere even close to Google or Bing's coverage. By their own admission Teclis is more narrowly focused and not meant to replace Google's index. So I'm going to go ahead and call them big fat liars.

I wouldn't even care that Google is their main index, that's fine and they can't be expected to compete with the billions of dollars Google spends on indexing. But the lack of transparency and shady business practices are a big turn-off for me.

[–] Undaunted@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 6 months ago

That's indeed very shitty and shady of them and I actually might contact their support about that. Thanks for pointing that out!

[–] ScreaminOctopus@sh.itjust.works 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Another account with exclusively Kagi shilling comments? Add this one to the pile.

[–] Undaunted@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 months ago

I moved my acocunt temporarily because feddit is not working correctly as you might know. Idk why the hate but I'm not affiliated with them by any means, just a happy user.

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