Kagi Search Engine: One Month Update
I just passed the 30-day mark with the Kagi search engine, and I'm happy to say that its pricing structure is going to be sustainable for me. I had worried that my searches would cost them more than the revenue from my $10 USD/month subscription. However, my usage for the month of June was just $5.71 USD (covering both home and work usage). In my excitement for Kagi, my first week consisted of far more searches than the rest of the month, and it evened out in the end.
My favourite feature has definitely been the ability to rank individual domains up or down in the search results. This makes it so easy to cut through trash results and surface relevant content. It has been especially useful in my new hobby of motorcycling. I've been researching all kinds of motorcycle manufacturers and models, but the web is full of automatically-generated, low-quality comparison pages that only cover basic specs and don't add original or useful content. In other words, they are complete wastes of time. Whenever I come across one of these websites, I can block it in Kagi and rest assured I'll never see it in my search results again. This is even better than extensions like uBlacklist, because the settings persist across my whole Kagi account, no matter which device or browser I'm using, or whether I'm at home or work.
As mentioned in my earlier Kagi post, $10 USD/month is right at the limit of what I'm willing to pay for a search engine, and with $5.71 USD of usage for June, I'm paying Kagi almost twice what my searches are worth. The Kagi team have been floating the idea of a true pay-per-search feature, and that's something that may interest me in the future. For now, I've been really happy with the service as-is, and plan to continue my subscription for the foreseeable future. If you're fed up with the quality of Google search results and willing to pay for something better, I recommend giving Kagi a shot.