jmccormac - 6:55 pm on Apr 29, 2012 (gmt 0)

do you think there's still room for an edited search engine, like the yahoo directory of old?

It is a good idea but I think that a high quality index is a good starting point. The problem is that the set of sites is potentially in the millions. That means having to rely on some algorithms to pare that set down to something that could be dealt with manually but it would be a Google-killer idea if it could be marketed as a manually approved index.

i know that the yahoo directory ultimately failed. but the web is a million times bigger now, with a billion times more lousy pages in it. maybe it's time for a human edited search engine to make a comeback?

Perhaps.

you could also make it socially-driven -- with people rating the sites themselves, rather than your staff. a bit like stumbleupon and (sorry to say it) google plus

Jimbo Wales tried something similar with his Searchwikia venture but that bombed because it did not pay any attention to search quality and adopted the Google approach of spidering everything and hoping that the public would help establish the quality of the sites. Naturally it failed. What would make this SE different is that it would only spider UK sites thus minimising the GIGO effect.

Regards...jmcc