I used pinterest and still hate(d) when it popped up on search.

Without too much conjecture I think the problem is search-related web crawlers and users have very different experiences with pinterest. To the web crawler, the information is there and easily accesible. To a user, it might be behind a login, or part of an image description, or a sidenote, or whatever. The page doesn't exactly load with what you are looking for front and center

Additionally, I don't use it through a browser, I use it in an app, so im not logged in on my browser.

I only recently discovered pinterest as a useful site, but only because a friend convinced me to create an account. It only becomes usable with an account and it even makes fun, but most people are probably like I was and don’t want to create an account and are annoyed of pinterest hijacking the „save image“ function, redirecting you when you don’t have an account and nagging you with a login wall. It really only becomes great if you give in (only took me 5 years or so).

There was a time where Google image search was dominated by Pinterest results but clinking through never took you to the photo. And most of the photos were rehosting of the original so you wouldn't get that either.

I wonder if it is also biased in the sense that it's only certain people who customise these things. And that it's only the most common ones. You would never see my favourite car forum listed here, but bumping it in search results is where I see value with the feature.

> Might these stats be biased by the demographics that use Kagi?

yes, obviously.

but also: Selection Bias Is A Fact Of Life

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/selection-bias-is-a-fact-of...

Do your friends who use it use Google to use it? Or do they go to the site itself.

I don’t use the site itself but the irritating thing is a first page full of useless Pinterest links when searching for something.

Of course they are biased. Just look at how NYTimes is both blocked and upvoted on Kagi. Some people like a source and others don’t, it’s that simple really.

I don't like pinterest because the images have no metadata. If I see something I'm interested in--like a piece of furniture--I have no way of knowing how to get more info on it.

Same thing with those displays that rotate earthporn with no info on the location. So annoying to see spectacular things and not know what they are.

I have a strong memory that Quora used to be quite good, and then was suddenly horrendous. Is this just me?

I had to quit doing so, because I discovered that it didn't just exclude listed domains, but performed a totally different search. Locations or local results were largely missing, when I excluded some domains.

Pinterest uses different domains for every country so you'd need to add around a dozen qualifiers to get the big ones excluded.

same here

To be fair, google DID provide quality at scale in the past. I'm not sure the same can be said about Pinterest.