snork.ca: kagi.com Search

kagi.com Search 2024-01-11

I know many admins don't bother to look at their logs. I do though. And lately I have been seeing some traffic to my site coming from kagi.com. Kagi is a search engine similar to [and different from] Google. You see, everyone has heard of Google, and almost everyone is aware of the fact that Google is tracking the shit out of people. Some folks think that is a bad idea. I mean, it's a great idea for Google because it makes them a shitload of money. It's bad for users because it is contributing to their decline towards having no purpose in life other than to provide income for others. Some folks like DGG as a replacement for Google that doesn't track them, though I'm still a little hesitant to use a search engine that censors results. Lately I have been using my own Whoogle instance, which while still Google, is at least harder for Google to attribute individual searches to individual humans. Anyways, on to Kagi...

screenshot of kagi.com website showing pricing tiers

I think I get the dog analogy.

Clearly this tiering system is designed to get people to spend as much as possible on the product. 100 one-time searches would be enough to confirm that the product functions, 300 searches per month is [hopefully] enough to make users drool over the allure of an ad-free search experience. When paired with the <sarcastic tone>bonus of access to AI features</sarcastic tone> that should hopefully land most users on the $10 per month tier. I would assume that $25 per month is mostly expected to be corporate stooges and people who wish to support the project financially. I don't even spend that much on phone service. While an upward-pushing tier system is pretty much expected in today's marketing landscape, it is pretty disappointing to see that AI is considered a significant enough feature that it would push people to the next tier.

I'd like to see an Internet where I can search for things and not have to be irritated later by ads for things vaguely related to my searches. I'd like to see a world where generating revenue isn't the most important thing in almost everyone's lives. Part of me wonders how much of the Kagi traffic landing on my site is just an ad for kagi rather than actual users. Here's an example from last night:

2024-01-11T00:20:00-05:00 65.182.226.0 [snork.ca:443] "GET /posts/2024-01-08-linux-from-scratch-boot-iso/ HTTP/2.0" 200 "https://kagi.com/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0"
2024-01-11T00:20:00-05:00 65.182.226.0 [snork.ca:443] "GET /style.css HTTP/2.0" 200 "https://snork.ca/posts/2024-01-08-linux-from-scratch-boot-iso/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0"
2024-01-11T00:20:00-05:00 65.182.226.0 [snork.ca:443] "GET /posts/2024-01-08-linux-from-scratch-boot-iso/chickencable.jpg HTTP/2.0" 200 "https://snork.ca/posts/2024-01-08-linux-from-scratch-boot-iso/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0"

The fact that this client picked up the document, the CSS, and the image all in one second is a good sign. The fact that the IP address belongs to a residential Internet provider is also a good sign. However I know some services use referrer spam to generate traffic to their own site. Anyways, if anyone reading this is an actual user of Kagi, I'd like to hear about your Kagi experience. Really, I'd be interested in knowing more about it from someone who actually uses it.