> When I first switched, I would often click the button to run the search on google for queries that weren't immediately giving me what I wanted
Same, I found it took a while to adjust my searching too. Kagi is much more sensitive to spelling things wrong. Google gets around that by only using the search query as an inspiration but that also introduces a lot of fuzziness in the result IMO. With Kagi, you get as much out of it as you put in is what it feels like to me. It's slightly harder to find things sometimes, sure, but at least we're using a product instead of being the product and that adds enough value for me for this to be the better deal overall.
The increased fuzzy interpretation is Google's greatest downfall. It takes away any ability to use it as a power user or for super-specific stuff. No Google, you don't know better than me. I need something really specific and you're "smoothing" the results to what some average random searcher might want!!
I am the point in my software engineering career where I simply don't need those dumbed down results. I need some niche research paper or the one guy's extremely in-depth benchmarking blog I found months ago but forgot to bookmark.
It got to the point where Google simply could not help me in my day job so I see the monthly cost as an essential expense similar to my JetBrains sub.
I'm no Google apologist (I use ecosia personally), but did you try using searching in quotes? That should force the search to only find specifically your query directly as spelled. Just curious if you did try it and there was still that "fuzziness."
Same, I found it took a while to adjust my searching too. Kagi is much more sensitive to spelling things wrong. Google gets around that by only using the search query as an inspiration but that also introduces a lot of fuzziness in the result IMO. With Kagi, you get as much out of it as you put in is what it feels like to me. It's slightly harder to find things sometimes, sure, but at least we're using a product instead of being the product and that adds enough value for me for this to be the better deal overall.