I was browsing Hacker News yesterday and saw a post titled Kagi Small Web ranking high on the front page. Curiosity got the better of me, so I clicked through. I ended up spending some time there just jumping through random posts comprised of actually interesting stuff written by real people, not the usual SEO-optimized or AI “slop” we see everywhere now.

Then I did a bit of digging. It turns out, this blog is on that list too 🙂

What is this list?

I went over to their GitHub repository to see what was going on. As of today, the smallweb.txt file is comprised of 34,492 blogs and personal websites. It’s basically a very large, curated index of a (more?) “human” internet.

If you’re wondering how a site gets included, they have a specific set of rules:

  • Non-Commercial: No intrusive ads, paywalls, or heavy affiliate marketing.
  • Human-Centric: Absolutely no AI-generated or LLM “spam” content.
  • Technical: You must have a valid RSS or Atom feed.
  • Recent-ish: The blog needs at least one post in the last 12 months to stay in the index.
  • Personal: It favors personal diaries, niche technical deep-dives, and independent essays over corporate blogs or newsletters (Substack seems like a no-go).

Turns out, these criteria favor both better content and a better experience, exactly what I value.

Seven years of “Zero Maintenance”

I actually never submitted my blog to be included. It likely got picked up because I’ve been running this blog for seven years now, since 2019. I use Jekyll - don’t know if it’s still a thing, but it works.

The best part? Jekyll generates an RSS feed out of the box, which turned out to be one of the requirements for getting indexed by Kagi. I host everything on GitHub Pages, which I highly recommend. It’s free, requires zero maintenance time, and it’s surprisingly robust. It can handle a “Hacker News hug of death” without breaking a sweat whenever one of my posts accidentally hits the front page.

If you’ve been thinking about starting your own blog and you have some technical skills, you don’t need a complex setup / CMS. You could literally just clone my repo, restyle the layout, and set up your own domain on GitHub Pages for free.

Is the small web actually useful?

The original HN thread had some mixed feelings. A few people were underwhelmed by the current implementation, calling it “more like a curated blog ring than a discovery engine for the broader indie web.” Others were more optimistic, acknowledging that it’s a “good idea with a decent foundation.”

Personally, I just appreciate the small bit of recognition. In a world where every search result feels like it was written by a bot to sell me a mattress, it’s nice to be officially part of the “Small Web”, even more since I didn’t subscribe to be on the list myself.

Cheers! 🍻