this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Google is supposed (SUPPOSED) to serve up closest to what you search for. SEO is the antithesis of this - it games the system to get a given website closer to or in front of your eyeballs even if it's content is less relevant. And Google has allowed this to continue (or more likely encouraged it on the down low because businesses that are SEO obsessed are more likely to be send money Google's way) because Google isn't a search engine anymore - Google is an advertising company with some internet services slapped on. Google 'search' is just a clown face for one of their advertising strategies. It doesn't serve up what's relevant - it serves up as much results that generate it revenue as possible without being so obvious about it that users get pissed off and switch search engines.
I do SEO as my day job.
I've only ever done white hat, and it's all about content relevance to user intent, creating a site that loads quickly and functions in an intuitive way, and is coded so that search engines can easily understand the site.
Of course the goal is almost always to get you to buy something, but all it really is is best practices for online publishing.
Would you then class the pages upon pages of generated, useless content I get for most Google searches nowadays as "black hat" SEO?
I highly recommend kagi.com.
Its paid search, but it has the best results I've gotten from any search engine without any extra hassle. I pay for the 300 searches for $5/month.
The only complaints people have had about it is the cost, but I'm so happy with it I'll happily jump to the next tier if I blow through these searches.
anecdotally, I find myself searching less and reviewing the results more. It's less cluttered and the results, even 4 or 5 down, feel so much more valid/accurate/useful.
I’m extremely happy with the results on Kagi. Setting up my own ‘page-rank’ with their search customizations is a godsend to get rid of any unwanted sites and promoted the sources I know I’ll come back to.
I’m a bit turned off the pricing though, especially since last month I blew through 1000 searches before the end of last month so currently back to Google, but frustrated by every second search or so.
Thanks! Replying so I remember to check them out tomorrow, but I’ll probably eventually relent and get unlimited too. With how much I apparently use it, probably worth it in the end 😅
This is my second month with them, but I have managed to stay under the 300 so far. Admittedly, I dont have it on my phone where I do quite a few searches throughout the day--but those searches are usually not-important or I want them to be tied into the google services (like maps). I should set it up though to get a true count of my web searches.
But I 100% find myself going to kagi for anything I really want an answer to. I can't think of a single time where I've had to fall back to google or bing (which I found myself doing all the time with duckduckgo and ecosia). Like I said, if I end up needing to spend $10+/month I'd gladly do it. I get more value out of kagi than I do half of the services I play for.
like everything is, you just weren't paying with money
How does it compare to duckduckgo?
I've been playing around with it as well.
It also has a bunch of decent knowledge tools built in, if you know how to use them. I use the stupid calculator thing more than I should; it's like a cheap wolfram alpha.
Literally used that to subtract 37 today. Could've done it myself but you type it in Chrome and it previews the answer for free. Such an easy check. I don't wanna support Google but they are at least pros at subtraction, and God knows you can't criticize that
AND “what percent of X is Y” questions! (stupid percentages)