Suggestion Request : Host your own blog on kagi and get indexed in kagi search

silvenga

As someone who writes blogs in his free time, I would love to improve the small blog ecosystem and increase engagement.

That said, I don't think Kagi's business model cares about "more engagement" since Kagi isn't serving ads - unless the goal is to paywall the blogs (giving users a reason to pay for Kagi) - which feels like Medium and other Freemium blogging platforms. If this is purely about improving the index for Kagi users, then supporting a spec like https://www.indexnow.org might provide a larger uplift.

It should also be noted that a lot of blog writers (at least in my space) want to avoid hosted blogging platforms, because they lose control of their content. I only see this benefiting the smallest of blog writers (see https://kristoff.it/blog/static-site-paradox/) who may quickly out-grow the need to host on Kagi.

Another worry is that many blogs are rather niche, so Kagi hosted blogs might only benefit "low hanging fruit" topics, or popular/trending topics (the reason why so many Youtube videos reference things like Minecraft/Roblox/PUBG/etc, even when completely irrelevant). If you give people a problem, they will gamify it (e.g. SEO will become a problem eventually).

I would also worry about Kagi prioritizing it's own content (user generated, or otherwise) - which is legally dubious. Hosting any kind of user-generated content is also increasingly becoming a liability (see Instagram, Facebook, etc.).

carl

Question: Why is Kagi the company that is interesting for hosting blogs? There are big platforms who are specialized in this, including for example Medium and Ghost.

However, I do agree that there should be a way for people to submit their sites (and other files) to Kagi for indexing, just as Google lets you submit a new website for indexing.

oreoro

This is how I envision how the search index would look like with the kagi blog platform feature.

oreoro

In response to carl:
By hosting on kagi , Other kagi users can easily comment/engage with the content without having to create a new account and avoid annoying stuff like pay walls etc. The aim of kagi blog platform is not to become the next medium but ideally provide a community of kagi users writing stuff for each other and comment on other people blog posts

In response to silvenga:
I cant comment on most of the things you mentioned as I don't have the legal expertise/ tech expertise to comment on point you raised.
IMHO,Kagi business model does care about user engagement so does any other company in the world ( even charities care if more people give donations) . User engagement go hand in hand with user experience. A better experience leads to better engagement and vice versa.
Secondly, in my design, kagi wont be prioritizing its own hosted content(its not their content anyways imo) as only users will raise the content to the front page if they find it is of good quality (similar to the mechanism it follows for domains) however i am not sure of the legal elements of this.

Please not that I am not affiliated with kagi.com in any capacity and I am just a member of the forum.

carl

oreoro By hosting on kagi , Other kagi users can easily comment/engage with the content without having to create a new account and avoid annoying stuff like pay walls etc.

In my opinion putting a paywall is probably the most important feature that a blog creator will need. Making high quality writing is a full time job, and can also often cost the writer a deal of money. For example if they need to purchase things to review, etc. It's also fair that a writer who is popular enough gets paid for her work by the readers.

If Kagi could make a platform with blog hosting, search, and money distribution from readers to creators, then that would be a really cool concept in my opinion. That would be like YouTube Premium or Kindle Unlimited for blogs (or any web content).

gladiator2339

Take Naver, the biggest search engine in South Korea that has higher market share than Google in South Korea (at least for now), for example. One of their main features is blog/cafe (which is their name for a forum) that users can create. This effectively works as their exclusive feature, as searching them outside of Naver is horrible (not that Naver is any less horrible itself, though). Of course, that's not what I'm suggesting, but that's how Naver gained its users ever since the beginning in the early 2000s: by providing unique and higher quality information when it was scarce.

This can be a great feature, really. But I'm concerned about these two things: 1) it should be available for paid users only, otherwise too much of Kagi's time and effort would have to go to content filtering, and 2) if it's going to be paid, do I really want to host my blog on a paid subscription service that I may not continue to use in the future?

We do have to keep in mind that pretty much all Kagi users are at least somewhat tech-literate and GitHub/Cloudflare Pages are a thing. The Kagi userbase is still very small, and I don't see how this will be worth the effort.

Hanbyeol

gladiator2339

lol I was just about to talk about Naver too.

In South Korea, "web portals" already do this.
Naver, the most popular site in the country, hosts blogs in a URL format like "blog.naver.com/username/random post id".

And their "blog" search results only show blog posts within the "walled garden". (And I don't like this)

e.g.
https://search.naver.com/search.naver?ssc=tab.blog.all&sm=tab_jum&query=iPhone

Naver blogs are also criticized in Korea for problems such as advertisements and paid reviews.

Edited for more context :
As I always expect from Naver, just saw a post about a "sponsored visit" to the LG Electronics store.

(Why LG Electronics was mentioned in a post -- they started selling iPhones in their stores after they got out of the smartphone business)

oreoro

gladiator2339
I self host my own blog but what every bloggers needs is a good communuty who responds critically to blog posts.The idea is to have kagi users engage with each other content without leaving the platform.

gladiator2339

Hanbyeol Hi, fellow Korean!

Kagi would obviously not do this, but it's also not easy to keep out spams like this as well and Kagi's userbase is too small to keep it paid service(tied to the subscription) yet. I love the idea but I'm equally critical of this.

oreoro

gladiator2339 Spam issue can be solved with modern solutions and human feedback. Obvisuoly , spammy content wont be rasied by kagi search users so they would not be shown on the front page index
An example would be hackernews where many spam articles are posted and only quality content is raised.

I also think kagi can potentailly attract new user base through kagiblog indirect marketing (i.e users sharing kagiblog links or someone who is interested in a privacy focused blogging platform)

Regarding the pay wall thing, I am not an economic expert by any means but I guess we can atleast try the pilot and see if enough people like this.Kagi can always discontinue such a service at a very little expense imo)

oreoro

@carl imho this idea is intended for new bloggers so that easily get started writing blog posts and get feedback without having to do SEO or spam tricks.
A serious blogger would ideally be on established blogging sites and once kagi bloggers feel ready they are always free to jump to a larger platform.
A ideal case would be a blogger who would be comfortable to keep writing blogs for kagi community and does not want to commit it as a full time job.

Hanbyeol

oreoro Obvisuoly , spammy content wont be rasied by kagi search users so they would not be shown on the front page index
An example would be hackernews where many spam articles are posted and only quality content is raised.

If the OP's suggestion is that Kagi's search results be determined by other people's votes, even by the "community", then frankly I don't want that.

The OP also mentioned using HN, and I also discovered Kagi from HN. As another commenter wrote earlier, there are probably a lot of people like that here, and I think there will be a lot of similarities (political leanings, cultural background, etc.) and it could be biased.
To be clear, I don't mind if we have a "Kagi blog," but it would be nice to at least have an option to opt out of the search results. (I think personalization is one of Kagi's advantages).

oreoro

Hanbyeol I cant comment on poltiical stuff due to my ignoranace.
username.kagiblogs.com should work like any other domain. Individual users can raise the content from a particular author(username.kagiblogs.com) if they like such content.
Kagi users can always personalize to opt out of the search results
I want to emphasize that username.kagiblogs.com will not be getting any special treatment and its merit will always be quality.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Kagi in any capacity, and I am only a forum member.

carl

Hanbyeol If the OP's suggestion is that Kagi's search results be determined by other people's votes, even by the "community", then frankly I don't want that.

Communal results voting would destroy Kagi. Search results shouldn't be determined by how a small group of activists spend their effort.

As I understood, @oreoro suggested that Kagi blogs could be ranked by the individual user just like it works today.

oreoro

To prevent spam, A good mesaure would be how old is the account before posting and is it trusted account. (i.e email verification, mobile or any relevant metric)
Another measure could be limiting users to submit their blog posts once a day .
Imho, Due to the paid nature of kagi, there is sufficient spam filter system already in place.

Hanbyeol

Thanks for clarifying.
Again, I don't really care if we have a blog as long as it doesn't get in the way of the main search functionality.
But I would also like to emphasize that I subscribed to Kagi for the search engine and simplicity, not for the need to communicate with others or post.

I guess it's because the company is interested in expanding other services, but I'd also like to hear some input from the Kagi team on this thread - since this thread is sticky.

Edit : Scrapped off-topic parts.

oreoro

Hanbyeol Since kagi services are personalized , you always have the ability to enable or disable the blog thing .That way you can continue to enjoy the main search functionality without any hinderence

oreoro

It is only natural for a company to grow apart from its core product. This usually means having new products that synergize well with its competencies. In this case, Kagi's core product is its search engine, and the blog is leveraging its core product to some extent.

Thibaultmol

It's an interesting idea but oh boy is this going to introduce a bunch of moderation bs they'll have to deal with.
There's a reason why a lot of people host blogs on their own website, because they don't need to worry about the place hosting their blog all of a sudden banning them for whatever reason and then the resulting backlash happening

oreoro

Thibaultmol thats an interesting point but someone wont risk their kagi membership for some illegal/morally wrong stuff eitherway.

Imho moderation should be fair as long as its legal and morally correct.

Like i mentioned earlier in the thread,kagi is a paid service and that inherently places some barriers for spam/bad actors.Another mechanism is to only allow kagi users to post 1 per day which will help ease the load for human moderators.

I guess we have to worry about people using the sevice as opposed to banning people without even launching!
That problem is not a major issue imo. If x amount of users "block" or "lower the post then kagi automaically block the user from posting content on their blogs for a certain time period . That way the user has to blame other users instead of kagi!

Please note that I am not affilited with kagi in any capacity