You Should Know @lemmy.world Revanee @lemmy.dbzer0.com 4d ago

YSK You can search the Fediverse instead of reddit using Kagi (search engine)

Kagi has an option to search the Fediverse. This makes it a lot easier than specifying a site in the search query, which would also limit the results to a specific instance.

http://kagi.com/

Why YSK: This lets you easily replace searches like "some topic reddit" with Lemmy!

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The idea of searching had me thinking that it would be nice to have a search-focused instance that didn't defederate from any sites (besides the illegal stuff) and auto-subscribes to every new community so it has all the information possible. Then you could do "foo bar site:searchlemmy.com" and get an effect similar to reddit

Although that's probably unnecessary. But would be kind of cool
- That sounds like a pretty good idea, since most search engines don't play very well with the fediverse. Could be a good workaround. I'm wondering how expensive it would be to host something like that. Maybe someone with experience hosting instances could give an estimate?
- Do it. Do it.
- I like lemm.ee is as close as you can get. AFAIK it’s federated with pretty much everyone and it’s got a very large userbase so nearly every conmunity is federated.
  
  Wait, a large userbase is required for an instance to federate with every community? I thought you could host a single user instance but still be federated with everything that you don't explicitly block.
- besides the illegal stuff
  
  That's a slippery slope. Illegal in which country?
  
  Something you (or I) may find perfectly fine could be heavily pushed back against and illegal in another legal framework.
  
  Look at how abortion / LGBTQ+ rights / gun ownership / personal drug use etc etc etc change country to country.
- Literally nothing is stopping you from making this yourself.
  
  Money
https://fedi-search.com/ allows more than kagi :)
- That and I'm not paying for yet another search engine aggregator (solves nothing SearX can't do for free) hosted in the USA that's pro AI slop.
  
  They seem to do quite a bit of indexing themselves. A good alternative that's from Europe would be Qwant, but they don't have a feature for searching the fediverse. It would be nice if it got added to fedi-search :)
  
  Qwant and Ecosia are building a search index, but I don't think there is anything that can really compete with Google and Bing at the moment: https://betterweb.qwant.com/en/2024/11/08/ecosia-and-qwant-join-forces-to-develop-european-search-index/
Just yesterday I cancel d my Kagi subscription because it is based in the US. I liked it though, for the few years I've used it. Also a lot of good progress going on.

I switched to Qwant as it is European.
- Qwant is probably the best free search engine at the moment tbh
Cool! I've been looking at kagi for a long while but hadn't bit the bullet due to the cost. They did a month free trial thing recently and I've been using it since and it's been really nice. Think I'll stick with it.

I really like the ability to make custom lenses (like predefined groups of sites to search) and a built in way to block sites or change their priority in listings. Can do that to Google with extensions like ublacklist, but this way I don't need to export my settings to other devices.
- Glad you like it!
  
  I'm in the same boat. Paying for search put me off at first, in big part due to having to login to use it. But now that I've tried, it's a lot easier to use than expected. For example, you can get a session link to use for incognito searches, or an even more private option with anonymous tokens that let you use it without the searches being linked to your account at all.
  
  The more I think about it, the more sense it makes. If a search engine is free, its goals won't be aligned with my interests as a user and we get stuff like sponsored search results.
  
  I also like that they let me turn off the AI results and I never have to see them again on any of my devices.
  
  Can you talk more about this extra private option with anonymous tokens? I haven't seen this yet.
- I want to like Kagi but their partnerships with Brave and Yandex turned me away
  
  From what I saw in the discussions regarding this topic, it seems they're using various third party indexes alongside their own, similar to how Qwant does it with Bing. It's unfortunate, but realistically other than building a full index like the one Google has, I don't see many other options. Google and Bing are plenty evil as well, not just Brave and Yandex. Maybe if the Qwant + Ecosia index works out, then we won't have to rely on companies like that. For now their position doesn't seem unreasonable to me: https://kagifeedback.org/d/2808-reconsider-your-partnership-with-brave
  
  Is there any search engine that isn't garbage and/or sleazy?
- Thanks for sharing uBlacklist
Is that subscription based search engine that everyone talks about ?
- Yes. Its 10 bucks a month though for it to be useful. There is a 5 bucks plan but its limited to only 300 searches.
  
  So..... what's the difference from other free search engine?

32 comments