*https://search.marginalia.nu, commonly mentioned on HN https://hn.algolia.com/?query=marginalia
And to be fair, I was simultaneously inspired by the blog thread to build a curated blog filter for my search engine, which led to a series of changes that overall tends to promote more of this types of results in general.
The fact that we're several to have similar ideas sort of validates the ideas I think.
I'm not complaining, glad there's more tools for searching outside the scope of SEO spam or content mills, and competition can only make the niche better (presumably, unless it gets big enough to incentivize disguising commercial content as niche blogs). Just felt like it might be a bit disingenuous to quote a blog list as inspiration for a search engine focused on "the non-commercial part of the web" which is exactly your engine's aim and wording, didn't know they've been working on small web initiatives since a similar timeline.
Hopefully you both find success and with it uplift hobbyist websites.
I understand the spirit of it and don't have any counter examples but seems like a bummer if someone has a nice indie blog but can't be added because they have a few ads or a sponsored post.
That is to say that very little other effort was made to curate the YT channels and we expect the user community will contribute to edit the list.
Also I was under impression that all YouTube channels had ads, so that is why this was not considered as a seperate criterion.
Now that I think of it, perhaps you can call Nebula "the Kagi of video streaming". Maybe you guys could collaborate somehow in the future ;D
So happy so see the small, independent and more humane web being highlighted.
I’m trying to do my part[0] but I have no doubt that a search engine—even if still a niche one— can have a much bigger impact.
Really well done Vlad!
Curation is still hard. Also, I personally don’t mind having different curated directories because those will reflect the taste and interests of the curator.
Right now everyone who is running any sort of curated discovery service needs to answer these same questions about roughly the same site.
Could be done, but it'd take time and effort.
And if the answer to that is no, then where do you draw the line when it comes to quality?
Curating anything is complicated and different people will have different opinions which is why you end up with different lists curated by different groups of people with different ideas about what should and shouldn’t be included.
why not Matrix? I think that's a more realistic alternative. :)
It would be nice to also be able to just search within the small web, maybe using a lens in the future?
Regarding the topic of self promotion, I would disagree with the current rules and I would ask you to allow people to self promote. As long they have an old enough blog, maybe even cut that down to a year, would be helpful. Most users on the small/indie web lack visibility and this would do them service. My blog is already within the index because I think it might have been picked up during the "HN share your blog" post that happened a while ago, but others might not have been that lucky.
I'm a Kagi customer, and a very happy one. The search engine is amazingly good. This only makes me happier with my search engine choice.
If I notice something is wrong I can report it and expect to have a developer look into it within reasonable time.
They are grateful for reports from users and if there is an actual problem (and not a misunderstanding) it is also fixed, again with a reasonable.
(The first major reason for me is premium search quality, no tracking probably comes at a distant third or something.)
Imagine getting that level of support for any other web browser!
For me you represent an incredible accomplishment: the first search engine that gives better results than Google, respects privacy, offers customization and so much more.
Thank you.
I notice google/bing and quickly kick in my muscle memory built up over the years to type duckduckgo.com and do another search.
After this I still am confused why the results are so crap. Then I notice the duck laughing at me and think... shouldnt this be a dog?
And then I start feeling bad for the original user of the device and tell them to do the search themselves and let me know when they get a result
https://github.com/kagisearch/smallweb/blob/main/smallweb.tx...
It's expensive enough that I can't imagine anyone repackaging it profitably (2x Bing search prices for me) but having to email someone adds just enough friction to discourage a lot of tinkerers from even trying it.
I noticed the example result for useyourloaf wasn't included if I switched it to "Sweden" and not sure if this is just an oddity or if the entire feature is nerfed because I just leave my locale on all the time.
This has been a personal pet project of mine and I spent considerable time getting my hands dirty with the code, as the team was busy with other initiatives. When I said the "feed broke" for the launch I meant I broke it. Software is messy especially for an old school dev. I learned in the process I am not a very good coder anymore (if I ever was one?), constantly going back and fixing stuff I previously thought was solid. Check it out in the linked repo [1].
I found the site replace the need for discovery for me, and getting to know various different humans and their writing felt good. There is a glimpse of hope in the concept and I hope you get to see it too (as soon as the feed is back up!)
You can check the list of included websites here [2]. And all the recent posts already surface in Kagi results (for relevant queries).
[1] https://github.com/kagisearch/smallweb
[2] https://github.com/kagisearch/smallweb/blob/main/smallyt.txt
[3] https://kagi.com/smallweb