My life changed very much for the better a few years ago when I started using Kagi for my search engine. For quite some time, I had been noticing that Google’s search results were becoming less and less useful. I also used Duck Duck Go, but it was only a little better (albeit much more private). Being charitable, I had initially lain the blame entirely on the sleazy “search engine optimization” (SEO) industry. They certainly deserve credit for making the web a more awful place by encouraging web site operators to lie in the single-minded pursuit of the almighty ad dollar.
It turns out, though, that Google gets a huge share of the credit:
The Department of Justice uncovered memos showing two competing visions within Google. Ben Gomes, a longtime engineer who built Google’s data center network, was “palpably horrified” at proposals to worsen search results. His opponent, former McKinsey consultant Prabhakar Raghavan, advocated making users search multiple times to find answers, generating more ad impressions per query. Rude Vulture
Of course, we now know whose vision Google embraced. Google could be putting resources toward mitigating the horror of SEO, but instead worked to deliberately worsen search results to drive ad revenue.
But I didn’t know all that; I just knew that search was no longer working very well for me. I tried Kagi, and suddenly I got an ad-free results page with far more relevant results. Life was good, again! I search dozens of times a day, and not having to wade through trash every time I do is soul-saving.
What’s the catch? Kagi isn’t free. You need a subscription to use it. But for your subscription fee (I think I pay $10/month) they add a lot of value.
One of their value adds is Kagi Small Web.
What is Kagi Small Web?
To begin with, while there is no single definition, “small web” typically refers to the non-commercial part of the web, crafted by individuals to express themselves or share knowledge without seeking any financial gain. This concept often evokes nostalgia for the early, less commercialized days of the web, before the ad-supported business model took over the internet (and we started fighting back!)
So…
- non-commercial ✓
- crafted by individual ✓
- without seeking any financial gain ✓
It sounded a lot like what I’m trying to do with twoprops.net, which raises an issue. I have at least claimed that I’m not interested in driving engagement with this site. I don’t collect any statistics, I don’t look at logs, I don’t have any hit counters or hidden pixels. I don’t advertise it or try to get people to link to it. Should I care whether Kagi Small Web recognizes twoprops.net as part of their “small web”? Should I nominate myself? It seemed quite unlikely that anyone else would have nominated this site, but when I checked the list of included sites, I was surprised to find that twoprops.net was already there. I was glad that I didn’t have to make a decision and possibly face up to my own disingenuity.
I’ve found that visiting Kagi Small Web is entertaining. It’s nice to see so many current sites by and for individual humans. For me, though, the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty low. I’m sure I’ll occasionally use it as a distraction, but I don’t think I’ll keep it in my RSS feed.
—2p