Quick Links
Premium search engines claim to protect your privacy and stop you from seeing ads while still getting the results you want. I tried Kagi, but while it does deliver on these criteria, I wouldn’t currently pay for it.
Why I Won’t Pay for a Premium Search Engine
1. More Manual Effort for Targeted Search Results
For all of its flaws, I’m still yet to see a better search engine than Google for giving me tailored search results.Kagidoes let you customize what you see, but the process is more hands-on.
When searching on Kagi, you’re able to select the shield icon and decide if a result is relevant. For example, you can pin websites; if they aren’t useful, you can block them altogether.
Though this feature is helpful, I like how Google shows me more targeted results immediately. Manybrowsers have security featureslike “Do Not Track,” too, so you can at leastmake your searches a bit more private.
2. I Don’t Mind Seeing Targeted Ads
I don’t have a problem seeing targeted ads on search engines, websites, or social media. Instead, I start having a problem when the ads are intrusive or unrelated to my interests. For example, if a site is unusable because of how many ads it has, I’ll find an alternative.
I think that paid ads are easy to ignore. But if your opinion differs, consider subscribing to a paid search engine instead.
3. I Didn’t Like the Interface
I do not like using programs with outdated interfaces. Unfortunately, I’ve always felt this is true when using paid search engines. You could extend this to almost every search engine besides Google.
Though initially clean, the interface looked 20 years old after I searched. Beauty matters to me, and Google’s search results look sleek. Moreover, you can access tools like Maps and see overviews—like the weather forecast for a destination—more easily.Interactive Google widgetslike this make finding simple information very simple. You can find some of these (like the weather) in Kagi, but you must search for them specifically.
4. Some Search Results Felt Outdated
Beauty matters to me, but I can trade off esthetics if I get the results I’m looking for. Unfortunately, I felt like many search results in Kagi were outdated.
For example, I searched for a city and received results from blogs that hadn’t been updated in years. This would be fine if the information was accurate, but much of the content wasn’t even formatted anymore (i.e., some pictures wouldn’t display themselves).
Some of the questions were also outdated. One, for example, still had information about COVID-19 entry requirements. Moreover, some images I searched for looked like they hadn’t been updated in years.
Should I Pay for a Premium Search Engine?
Although I wouldn’t pay for a premium search engine (for the above reasons), I don’t think it’s a bad idea for everyone. If you dislike seeing paid ads in search results, removing them via a premium search engine might be a good idea. Kagi starts at $5 per month for 300 searches, rising to $25 per month for unlimited searches.
To give Kagi some credit, I also liked the option to choose whether a site was relevant. It’s also certainly one ofthe better private search engines. Google does much of the segmenting for you, but nonetheless, this would be a nice feature. Still, it’s not enough on its own for me to switch.
Though paying for privacy is worth considering, I also felt DuckDuckGo had a better experience than Kagi. So, if privacy is a big concern, consider looking at DuckDuckGo first.
