Downweigh domains in search results based on amount of ads/trackers

mesaoptimizer

I'm not so sure about that, and I don't agree in general to this posture: we're saying here that "obviously" kagi users will not need the "most famous" sites if they've ads. But, as kagi doesn't display help messages to a user that search "how to kill myself", I don't also think that kagi has to treat differently for me some results over others, based on popularity.

I agree. I now also believe that there's no need for additional complexity by treating popular sites differently.

3) if user sets this parameter (say: 5) then you'll retrieve the same results as before, but every result that have more than TRACKER_NUMBER trackers, are shown below every other "good" result. So something like: first, the group of "good results", ranked appropriately; then, the group of the "bad result", with the relative ranking mantained.

Can't you do this immediately by using the "Order By" drop down and ordering the results by Ad/Tracker count? Sure, the relative ranking is maintained in your proposal, but this doesn't provide any significant benefit over the current version of Kagi.

b) user can have an immediate feedback for "how is spammy my result list", and could act accordingly. For example, if all these results but the first two will be "bad", the user could try another search, or refine search terms, etc

If a user has to do multiple searches, each query will cost them. This doesn't save money in comparison to Kagi querying for additional search results and entirely filtering out the ones that meet the threshold of high tracker count. Worse, you are wasting user time and effort for the same cost.

seventhwave

mesaoptimizer Can't you do this immediately by using the "Order By" drop down and ordering the results by Ad/Tracker count? Sure, the relative ranking is maintained in your proposal, but this doesn't provide any significant benefit over the current version of Kagi.

the result list is the same as now, and you're right. but what about the user experience about his search?
I mean: in this way you can have a gross understanding about the "tracker quality" of your search, and you may act accordingly. I know, this is a compromise and doesn't satisfy the real need. And by the way, would be also my need (I'd like to have your proposal).

mesaoptimizer If a user has to do multiple searches, each query will cost them. This doesn't save money in comparison to Kagi querying for additional search results and entirely filtering out the ones that meet the threshold of high tracker count. Worse, you are wasting user time and effort for the same cost.

Uhm maybe I don't understand something here.
Thinking about this proposal I'm not caring about the free tier user (with limited queries); insted, I think that the use case will be the full user, that pays XX $/month for unlimited queries.

My real great worry now is that kagi, striving for "extreme" excellence, could have a monthly fee too high for lots of wannabe loyal users.
There are already threads here where users, in a collaborative and loyal way, are asking to make prices lower or have lower tiers...this is NOT because the kagi monthly fee is disproportionate. I fully trust @Vlad and colleagues, so I firmly believe in them, when they write that maybe 10$/month is a fee that will not be enough.
So, what will we choose?

10$ / month for this kagi barebone version with compromises
or
15$ / month for kagi with this filters, and (for example) up to 5 result pages, etc?

I'm very worried about the financial sustainability of kagi: I was waiting for a search engine like this since at least 10 years, and I don't want kagi to die for being too too niche.
I think that we have to build and launch a good search engine looking closely to let the monthly fee as low as possible, giving at the same time the kagi team the money, time and userbase that they need to make a multi-month financial plan.

I'm sorry @Vlad if my worries are not aligned to kagi vision: if so, please tell us and I'll modify my expectations.

Thanks.

Vlad

seventhwave It is likely that at $10/mo Kagi can not be sustainable and we will need to increase the price just to have a shot at having a future vs certainly not having one. We are considering $19/mo ($15/mo, $12/mo for annual/bienneial billing) which will give us a bit more margin/capital to work with and as a part of it we may be able to introduce improvements in search quality.

NoGoogle

Vlad I actually like the concept of tiered plans. Many company's already do it well from video games to Netflix. A base Kagi version of ~$10+ that covers unlimited bare-bones basic search, a ~$20 a month for regular search with all the features Kagi currently has today, and a Pro tier version of Kagi at say ~$50 a month for the must ludicrous of feature requests by pros like tens if not hundreds of pages of results to scroll through and every other feature request here that could be cool but way too expensive to ever consider viable. (I'm just throwing numbers for idea no merits to them).

This would solve lots of the current problems, everybody needs better search but not everybody can pay expensive prices but not everybody needs insane features. Kagi understands user queries and gives no bullshit good results so that in itself is worthy of paying for as a basic base search plan without customization. All the more advanced not so necessary but still necessary can be part of pro plans and such.

Havok

PC Gamer is a well known site, and shows up high on a lot of search results. Ofc I could lower the ranking. But how about letting us add automatic lowering the rank basd on how many ads/trackers they have?

PC Gamer has 92(!) trackers on their site, and I would love to have an option in Kagi that sets website in results automatically to "lower" if they have X trackers (maybe the same for those sites that have little or no trackers?), and then show a text prompt at the top with something like

Havok

Dammit. Sorry... now I found a post talking about this from 2022.

Luis

Havok merging your post with that thread

taylorsatula

I propose a feature that demotes websites that have the user swimming in obtrusive advertisements. We experience ad-free search within Kagi and then you go to halfbakedharvest.com (or similar) and 3/4 of the page is covered in popup ads. Its a jarring change.

Similar to the "allow some ads" setting in adblockers.

I see the user discovering sites that aren't ad farms. I bet this would help prioritize human written & detailed content too because lots of ads and AI generated garbage go hand-in-hand.

wavexx

I'd love to even just just have a toggle for "exclude sites with trackers / ads" and see what remains, so that I can still search by recency or relevancy at the same time.

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