Sometimes I see people frustration-post screenshots of Google searches marred by Gemini AI banners.
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My steps to configure Kagi as a genAI-free search engine:
In settings
- Disable General->"Keyboard Shortcuts"
- Click Appearance->"Custom CSS" and paste in the text from https://codeberg.org/zerodogg/kagi-no-ai/src/branch/main/kagi-no-ai.css
- Disable Search->AI->"Auto Quick Answer"What's nice about this is it's bound to your account, so it "works everywhere". You don't have to use a particular browser, you don't have to set up plugins on all your machines.
I've been using Kagi this way for about a year—results seem just as good as Google
Does this get rid of the AI interpretation of your search query and force a search on your actual search terms?
Because No AI duck duck go is garbage in this way. It avoids posting stupid AI summaries, but it still reinterprets whatever you type into the search box, and runs a search based on what it thinks you are looking for, rather than what you actually asked for
I use it more often than anything else, but that doesn't mean it isn't complete crap. Everything else is just even worse right now
Lycos is the only search engine I know that actually searches on what you type in. But it's clearly deprioritized by its owning company, and is down about 50% of the time
The whole search industry is now back to where it was at before Teoma -- and then Google which stole its logo and concept
Everything on the market is garbage, and whoever can produce something that actually works will win all the customers
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Does this get rid of the AI interpretation of your search query and force a search on your actual search terms?
Because No AI duck duck go is garbage in this way. It avoids posting stupid AI summaries, but it still reinterprets whatever you type into the search box, and runs a search based on what it thinks you are looking for, rather than what you actually asked for
I use it more often than anything else, but that doesn't mean it isn't complete crap. Everything else is just even worse right now
Lycos is the only search engine I know that actually searches on what you type in. But it's clearly deprioritized by its owning company, and is down about 50% of the time
The whole search industry is now back to where it was at before Teoma -- and then Google which stole its logo and concept
Everything on the market is garbage, and whoever can produce something that actually works will win all the customers
@NilaJones when i want kagi to find exact matches and not synonyms i put quotation marks around the words, such as turning
rust curses library
into
"rust" "curses" "library"
I would have preferred functionality like old google where if it decides to deliver an approximate search it tells you and asks if you want to search exactly. But I'm told google doesn't work like that anymore anyway.
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@NilaJones when i want kagi to find exact matches and not synonyms i put quotation marks around the words, such as turning
rust curses library
into
"rust" "curses" "library"
I would have preferred functionality like old google where if it decides to deliver an approximate search it tells you and asks if you want to search exactly. But I'm told google doesn't work like that anymore anyway.
I tried that with a longer phrase, on kagi, but no luck
It still gave me a bunch of unrelated web pages that did not include the (very public, but non-commercial) one that had my phrase on it -
I tried that with a longer phrase, on kagi, but no luck
It still gave me a bunch of unrelated web pages that did not include the (very public, but non-commercial) one that had my phrase on it@NilaJones if you are looking for an exact phrase, I would put quotes around the whole thing. Also, did you notice "verbatim mode"? If quotes around entire phrase is not an exact phrase match, maybe the "verbatim" option is.
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@NilaJones if you are looking for an exact phrase, I would put quotes around the whole thing. Also, did you notice "verbatim mode"? If quotes around entire phrase is not an exact phrase match, maybe the "verbatim" option is.
I did not see that, no! Thanks very much. Now if only it could be the default...
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I did not see that, no! Thanks very much. Now if only it could be the default...
@NilaJones it says here you can set it as the default https://help.kagi.com/kagi/settings/search.html
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Sometimes I see people frustration-post screenshots of Google searches marred by Gemini AI banners.
And that sucks! I'm sorry. But I have to ask: If Google frustrates you… maybe switch away? There *are* no-AI alternatives!:
- Kagi is an AI-infected search engine, but they offer a "custom CSS" feature (see next post) you can use to remove the AI.
And *this* is the time to get out. Before Google takes the search you're used to away completely: https://aftermath.site/google-search-ai-changes/
@mcc I was a long term user of DuckDuckGo, and gave up on them with all the MSN news links. But it looks like they’ve fixed that.
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Sometimes I see people frustration-post screenshots of Google searches marred by Gemini AI banners.
And that sucks! I'm sorry. But I have to ask: If Google frustrates you… maybe switch away? There *are* no-AI alternatives!:
- Kagi is an AI-infected search engine, but they offer a "custom CSS" feature (see next post) you can use to remove the AI.
And *this* is the time to get out. Before Google takes the search you're used to away completely: https://aftermath.site/google-search-ai-changes/
@mcc I tend to add https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist and some filters at https://github.com/rjaus/awesome-ublacklist
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@mcc I fear that Google and Microsoft will eventually cut access to their indexes in order to force people into their "AI", and IIRC both Kagi and DDG are not doing their own indexing. (Again, IIRC; Kagi usess Google's index and DDG uses Microsoft's.)
@BoydStephenSmithJr @mcc Mojeek indexes independently. Haven't tried it though.
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@jdp23 @mcc @ireneista IIRC this is in line with findings on misinformation in general, that you don't generally remember where you learned a thing, and it is easier to accept than reject claims, so just being exposed to misinformation makes one more inclined to inadvertently internalize it
edit:
- this Vox article summarizes and links to several studies
- more explanations (and examples) in this article at The Conversation
- this Conversation article notes that "the fine details needed to debunk a myth are generally more complicated than the myth itself" and therefore harder to remember
- see e. g. this 2009 paper arguing, basically, that easier-to-remember things are perceived as truer; this 2019 study on inducing false memories about Ireland's 2018 abortion referendum; or this 2024 study on repetition and climate-skeptic claims
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@ireneista @jdp23 @mcc caveat that i am not very knowledgeable about psychology and did not do a proper Review of the Literature, this is just the kind of stuff i've seen reported on in media
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@BoydStephenSmithJr @mcc Mojeek indexes independently. Haven't tried it though.
@RuchiraSDatta @BoydStephenSmithJr tried mojeek, it was the best of the "small" search engines I audited. Not quite on par with Google/kagi though and there was a box advertising its "AI" on every page
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@ireneista @jdp23 @mcc caveat that i am not very knowledgeable about psychology and did not do a proper Review of the Literature, this is just the kind of stuff i've seen reported on in media
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@NilaJones it says here you can set it as the default https://help.kagi.com/kagi/settings/search.html
Thank you very much for all of this, this makes me willing to give it another try
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@RuchiraSDatta @BoydStephenSmithJr tried mojeek, it was the best of the "small" search engines I audited. Not quite on par with Google/kagi though and there was a box advertising its "AI" on every page
@mcc @BoydStephenSmithJr Thank you
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Sometimes I see people frustration-post screenshots of Google searches marred by Gemini AI banners.
And that sucks! I'm sorry. But I have to ask: If Google frustrates you… maybe switch away? There *are* no-AI alternatives!:
- Kagi is an AI-infected search engine, but they offer a "custom CSS" feature (see next post) you can use to remove the AI.
And *this* is the time to get out. Before Google takes the search you're used to away completely: https://aftermath.site/google-search-ai-changes/
@mcc A decentrilsed search engine. No AI, no tracking. No advertising. No javascript of any kind. Never pay for it. Anyone can setup their own "branch" and contribute. Why does this sound so much like the #Fediverse? I could use some help with the system I've building for over a year and with corporations selling us out, we can band together to take the internet back.
This is what the internet was BEFORE the corprite take over.
This is #TidySearch https://search.mpaq.org -
Sometimes I see people frustration-post screenshots of Google searches marred by Gemini AI banners.
And that sucks! I'm sorry. But I have to ask: If Google frustrates you… maybe switch away? There *are* no-AI alternatives!:
- Kagi is an AI-infected search engine, but they offer a "custom CSS" feature (see next post) you can use to remove the AI.
And *this* is the time to get out. Before Google takes the search you're used to away completely: https://aftermath.site/google-search-ai-changes/
@mcc Seirdy has a good list of independent search engines. I don't know whether Kagi is fully independent at the moment or just wraps Google and Bing results like DDG. https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/
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Sometimes I see people frustration-post screenshots of Google searches marred by Gemini AI banners.
And that sucks! I'm sorry. But I have to ask: If Google frustrates you… maybe switch away? There *are* no-AI alternatives!:
- Kagi is an AI-infected search engine, but they offer a "custom CSS" feature (see next post) you can use to remove the AI.
And *this* is the time to get out. Before Google takes the search you're used to away completely: https://aftermath.site/google-search-ai-changes/
@mcc So, I did something recently that I've been exceptionally happy with... I set up a local, self-hosted instance of SearXNG. This lets me:
- Choose the engine that I want
- Aggregates answers from the search engines that I've chosen
- Avoids the AI BS
- Keeps me from being actively tracked by Google/Meta/etc.
- Avoids the issue that public SearXNG instances have with using too many API calls.
- Provides a boat load of additional options that I won't even start to talk about
And, it wasn't difficult to set up. All I had to do was map a port to my local system, and I have everything working. It's amazing.
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Sometimes I see people frustration-post screenshots of Google searches marred by Gemini AI banners.
And that sucks! I'm sorry. But I have to ask: If Google frustrates you… maybe switch away? There *are* no-AI alternatives!:
- Kagi is an AI-infected search engine, but they offer a "custom CSS" feature (see next post) you can use to remove the AI.
And *this* is the time to get out. Before Google takes the search you're used to away completely: https://aftermath.site/google-search-ai-changes/
Kagi is a paid service though, isn't it?
