Thank you. Sounds like the search results are not actually much better on Kagi, but the features around search such as blocking domains is where you find the value. That would explain why I didn't see much of a difference when I tried it out without doing any customization.
I don't agree with the distinction you're trying to make. Google also tries to customize your results for you, but does not offer you any control (don't know about ddg). I think of it as the same thing with Kagi, expect I have explicit input into the results.
Some of these changes are subjective. E.g. I have blocked all of Pinterest since it just clutters my results, but other people explicitly want Pinterest in their results. (not I don't know who would want the seo'd programming sites, but that's a different matter).
