IceRocket Gets Financing

[chrisnrae]

I came across an article today [news.com.com] that talked about a new upstart SE called IceRocket and that it now has financing from the owner of the Dallas Mavericks (a sports team for those not familiar).

I went to check it out and was pretty surprised. Next to each result is a thumbnail, alexa ranking, archive.org link, quick view option and a listing of other SE's it appears in and at what number (although that last one certainly isn't "complete" according to the searches I did). Even has a "froogle-esque" feature.

Anyway, first I saw of it. No idea what the technology is behind it, but was interested in seeing if anyone else had seen and and what the thoughts were on it.

[Freedom]

I've been following this. If you read the posts the self-promoters make about their own metasearch engine in other forums, you quickly see their approach to marketing icerocket is immature. They use profanity to describe how it is the best search engine and will kick Google's *&^%.

At one point, they tried to spread a false rumor that Howard Stern is involved with icerocket.com

Seven engines are involved but there is over-lap from Yahoo properties Alta Vista, AlltheWeb which is basically the same, not to mention MSN and Lycos.

Not a bad metasearch engine, but there are other good metasearch engines out there as well that have been around awhile.

[rise2it]

I find it interesting that although it's a 'metasearch' engine, it doesn't pull any results from the Big G....

[Freedom]

It's against Google TOS to metasearch it. If you see a metasearch engine proclaiming they search Google, they are going through one of the partner sites like AOL.

[AmeriClicks]

Icerocket is quickly developing a very bad reputation for very unprofessional marketing methods among other things.

[Brad]

>>It's against Google TOS to metasearch it.

For free. If you pay them enough you can metasearch Google, but it is not cheap.

[chrisnrae]

"for very unprofessional marketing methods"

So I've seen here and there. ;) It is a shame too - they actually have a set up that could attract users IMO. Hopefully as they try and grow as a search engine, they will also try to grow as businessmen (or women).

[JuniorHarris]

>Icerocket is quickly developing a very bad reputation for very unprofessional marketing methods...

Rather well-known now for spamming forums, and given their recent PR lies, who is to say any of this recent news is even true.

[GameMasterM]

This is another Mark Cuban backed metasearch venture. He left Mamma.com in the dust and now he has a new toy to throw money at. After all he IS The Benefactor.
If you compare IceRocket.com to SearchGuy.com for instance you find little difference except the pictures, OOh!
Neither will ever amount to much. Doomed to the bottom of the metasearch world until they die with no loved ones by their side.
A good idea is not enough!

[dataguy]

I could never understand the SE's that use Alexa for their thumbnail images. First off, Alexa only has images of home pages, and Alexa only has a small percentage of thumbnails for their web sites anyway.

Add to this the fact that most of these types of engines rank their listings according to Alexa ratings, which simply doesn't work. We all know that popularity does not equal relavance. Shoot, even PageRank doesn't equal relavance. If IceRocket ranked their listings directly from a database other then Alexa, then less than 10% of their listings would have images, since Alexa is more likely to have a thumbnail image if it has a better Alexa rating.

I like to see innovation, but I don't see anything new here...

[Freedom]

Mark Cuban got lucky once - and that's about it. I don't think he thought this through before he invested in icerocket.com

The more I read about icerocket, - blogs, forums, researchbuzz, - the more I have to wonder why it's being taken that serious? The posts they've (creators) made about themselves in the forums is just idiotic and immature. That kind of prose might work in a fraternity bathroom stall, but it doesn't look good when you are trying to claim you are a serious Google competitor.

With the bathroom talk and lies (Howard Stern) - they've got a lot to overcome already.

Added- The recent news is true because Cuban posted it on his blog. But he didn't say anything about $3 million last I checked.

[IntegraGsrBalla]

I think the site will be a hit. I know many Pay Per Click Advertisers that are awaiting their advertising program to launch.
I, myself is one of them.
If they keep their marketing up they should do alright. But the search engine world is pretty much already constructed. Who knows how easy it will be to compete with google, yahoo, altavista, etc.

[jmccormac]

Who knows how easy it will be to compete with google, yahoo, altavista, etc.

We real operators of the alternative search engines do. Most of us don't look upon it as competing with Google. It is more like staying under the radar and hoping the turnip fields of PhDs in Google don't decide to cause problems for us by getting into our niche areas. Google et al are macro search engines. They cannot do local search well, if at all. This is the niche that most of the alternative search engines occupy.

Regards...jmcc