Why I Pay for Kagi, an Ad-Free Alternative to Google Search
Google search is getting worse all the time, but most of its free alternatives aren’t as good at finding what I’m looking for. Since Google makes money from advertising, its main incentive is to increase revenue by showing you better ads. Recently, this has led to a noticeable decline in the quality of search results. This led me to the idea of using a paid search engine instead of Google. Kagi enters.
What is Kagi?
Kagi is a paid search engine developed by the people who created the Orion browser . It allows you to perform 100 searches for free, but after that you can pay between $5 and $25 per month for different levels of its service. Thanks to search giants and artificial intelligence companies, the idea of paying to search the Internet may seem absurd at first glance, but Kagi promises an ad- and tracker-free experience that is quite tempting.
Is it worth paying for a search engine?
Kagi has a lot of useful features (and is ad-free), so it’s worth it in my opinion. After all, when a business model involves charging people for a service, the company has an incentive to create good products. I hope Kagi can continue to do this in the long run. I’ve been using Kagi as my default search engine for the past few months and I’ve started to really like it. So far, all my attempts to get away from Google search have been unsuccessful, but with Kagi, I have finally found a good alternative to the search giant. Here are some of my favorite ways to use Kagi, all of which convinced me that sometimes it’s worth paying for a search engine.
View AI results only when you need it
I’m so tired of AI being forced to do everything, but Kaga’s approach to AI is refreshing. The search engine has maintained its agreement, which is good to see. If you are using Kagi, you will not encounter the AI unless you activate it manually. To do this, simply add a question mark to your search query. The AI response will appear above the search results.
Remove AI-generated images from search results
Kagi lets you block AI-generated images from search results. This feature is difficult to implement effectively because the Internet is now completely filled with low-effort artificial intelligence, but Kagi does the job acceptably. Simply go to Kagi’s settings by clicking the hamburger menu icon in the top right corner of the home page and selecting Settings . Now go to Search > AI and turn on Exclude AI-generated images . Kagi says he blocks AI images on a “best-possible” basis, meaning there’s a chance some could slip through the cracks. Kagi automatically tags AI-generated images in search results and, in addition to settings options, provides search filters that allow you to display only AI images or remove them altogether. In my tests, it was able to identify about 50-60% of AI-generated images in search results, and you can always block domains that provide too many of these results to complement the rest.
You can read more about how Kagi implements AI image filters in its documentation .
Try search filters to refine your results.
When you search for something on Kagi, you’ll see a list of suggested filters to help you fine-tune your query right above the first result. Although these buttons are displayed prominently, there is also a drop-down menu next to them with additional options. These filters allow you to search for results from a different region, sort results by relevance, number of trackers on the website or recency, and filter results by time period. There’s also an advanced search tab that allows you to refine your results if that’s not enough.
Hide clickbait from video
Kagi also allows you to search for videos and has two interesting features to reduce clickbait. First, you can replace the clickbait thumbnails with screenshots from the actual video. Secondly, you can change the titles to lowercase or lowercase. This will remove those ugly thumbnails and annoying all-caps titles from your results, making it easier to find useful videos. To enable these features, go to Kagi Settings > Search > General . Scroll down the page and you will see Video Search Settings . Click the drop-down menu next to the two options and select what you need.
Create lenses to refine your results
If you want to limit your search results to a few trusted sites, try using Kaga’s “search lenses.” Each of these lenses allows you to filter out unwanted results by focusing only on certain sites. By default, Kagi has some interesting lenses, such as Small Web, which limits results to small websites, and Forums, which only searches forums. This will allow you to discover some hidden gems that you might not otherwise find. You can also create your own lens by going to Kagi Settings > General > Lenses > Create New . I created it to search for posts on websites I write for and gave it a rating (!lh). Now I just need to add !lh to any search to find results on these websites, which helps me find my own articles much faster.
Customize the results to your liking
You can rank different domains up or down in Kagi search results (but only for your account). This feature also allows you to see certain domains less or block them completely. To set this up, simply go to Kagi Settings > Search > Personalized Results > Add Domains . You can also view Kagi’s domain leaderboard to see which sites its users are promoting, demoting, or blocking.
Learn all the keyboard shortcuts
Open the Kaga website and click the ? key will show a complete list of all supported keyboard shortcuts. Learning some of these can greatly speed up your workflow and I highly recommend doing so. I really like using the !bang operators, which makes searching faster. For example, you can add !v to any search term to search for videos. Likewise, !i searches for images, !n searches for news, and so on. There are two other keyboard shortcuts I use regularly: Shift-~ (tilde) to open Kagi’s Control Center, and / to quickly return to the search bar and type another query.
Opening links in the same tab
I get irritated when websites open links in a new tab without asking if I want to do the same. By default, Kagi is no different in this regard, as its default setting is to open links in a new tab. However, you can go to Kagi’s general settings page ( Settings > Search > General ) and turn off “Open links in a new tab” to change this preference.
Use redirects to reduce irritation
Kagi has a useful redirect feature that allows you to replace certain URLs with preferred alternatives. You can use this to bypass Google AMP links and go directly to the original website or open old Reddit every time you click a Reddit link in Kagi. This feature is located under Kagi Settings > Search > Advanced > Redirects . It’s worth checking out Kagi’s redirect support page to learn how to get the most out of them.
Use Privacy Pass for anonymity
If you want a more private Kagi search, you can use the Privacy Pass feature. Because Kagi requires you to be logged in to use the product, you can’t actually search the service anonymously. To get around this limitation, you can try Kagi Privacy Pass , which authenticates your account using a token system and keeps your searches anonymous. The installation process is browser dependent and this feature is not supported in some browsers (such as Safari).
There are many more advanced features you can try in Kagi, but these are the ones I find most useful. But as a bonus, before I continue, I will also mention Kagi Translate , which is a good alternative to Google Translate. It displays alternative translations below each result, and if you hover over a translation, it will explain what’s different about it. This allows you to choose the best version of a sentence to share with others, or makes it easier to understand the context of a quote in another language.