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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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Technology
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I can do everything Kagi does for free...using SearXNG.
How do you duplicate this feature in SearXNG? https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/website-info-personalized-results.html
It's basically the major thing keeping me with Kagi.
That seems like a crutch instead of a real feature. I hate even just thinking about having to manage that. What if you want info from sites you do not already know about? Seems like finding new things through search is basically dead anymore.
Websites I've never heard of come up very frequently. The feature I find highly useful involves a) hiding shitty disinformation websites as I encounter them, or blocking sites like pintrest, and b) elevating results from websites I like, like having letterboxd results rank higher than IMDB when I search for movies or whatEVER.
Being able to customize my own results to favour what I'm actually looking for is such a crutch.
Isn't that exactly what the "weight" in searXNG does?
Where can I find that setting? I don't see anything like that anywhere in the UI. If it's in the config files and not in the UI, that isn't particularly useful to me.
It's in the UI on the Engines tab. However, you can only see it there, you still have to use the config file to actually change it, sorry. That's not hard at all though.
If you don't see this option, perhaps you're running an older version? I'm running the latest docker.
Oh, I think this is different to what I'm talking about. Seems like the weight in SearXNG impacts search engines used, where what I'm talking about is in regards to the actual results. So I could prioritize or deprioritize websites which tend to produce good or bad results, block domains, pin favourites, etc. The example I used elsewhere is like having letterboxd results rank higher than IMDB when I search for movies
Ah I see. I didn't really understand the requirement. That would indeed be a nice one though pretty hard to configure for general search because the results can come from so many sources.
As well as that, for special-purpose things like movies it does in fact have a ranking for those by querying common sites like IMDB directly as an engine. So in that case you can use the weighting system to show preference. It doesn't seem to support letterboxd as a source but it does some others:
That's cool, but I'd still prefer not to be wrangling a dozen or so engines with bangs and editing config files when I could do it all through the UI in a more intuitive way. While I don't mind initial setup, I have very little appetite for endless tweaking of config files. So while I'll keep an eye on SearXNG and occasionally pull it onto my server, Kagi can continue being my daily driver for now.
Yeah I understand, Kagi is a good service!
So I only have to find one thing Kagi can do, that SearXNG can't?
Then what?
SearXNG is probably at the very core of Kagi; with a bunch of extra code and UI on top of it. Bangs work as well as lenses, including external bangs. If you can dream of an engine; you can use it with SearXNG; creating an engine with it is documented well.
I promise any single thing Kagi can do that SearXNG can't or won't; won't matter. SearXNG is superior to Kagi in every way by cost, and by being free, open source, and functionally all you need.
So it doesn't actually matter if Kagi can do something SearXNG can't.
It's cheaper. No argument with that.
Yeah I always thought Kagi used that money to build their complete own index.
Now I hear that their index is only tiny and it's mostly just delegated searches? Why does it cost so much then?
I have the big SearXNG portal bookmarked ( https://searx.space/ ) but I don't find that I ever reach for it that often. Not being able to cull lower quality sites is just a little bit of extra toil I'm happy to pay to go away.
You do have to host it yourself or run your own personal instance to get the power of SearXNG; if you've not tried this, please do not write it off.
If hosting it yourself or even running it locally in a container on your machine at home is too technical for you; nobody is going to bane you for that. In fact there's several guides and videos out there that might help you if you're inclined to learn.
If not; you're also free to continue consuming as you do.