Time to get home now - I like to leave before the milkman arrives!
I take it from your putting the notice in this category that you are UK based. I had a look at the site, it is pretty quick and gives reasonable results. (Well nearly - my top site only ranks No.2)
I generally object to meta-search engines as they are dependent on the existence of the basic engines - and can be construed as direct competition to these engines. This I feel is quite a dangerous business model.
Putting aside my objections I have to look at your partner programs and see what you are offering
all the best
Ian
I’d be interested to know what you intend to do about the marketing of the site?
Improvements? I'd like to be able to chose between all four search options (meta UK, parallel UK, meta world, parallel world) from the dropdown rather than having to click a tab and then enter the search term. Thatway I could setup a new search term and choose search type all in one hit.
Onya
Woz
(edited by: Woz at 10:41 am (gmt) on Aug. 13, 2001
I noticed just a little detail that could be fixed. The "more results" at bottom wright does not work.
Congrats! Good work (for impossibly cheap?) :)
>> I generally object to meta-search engines as they are dependent on the existence of the basic engines - and can be construed as direct competition to these engines. This I feel is quite a dangerous business model.
Ian, a fair comment, and something we did think about at the outset. What we found is that many search engines don't look too badly on metasearch since they are going some way to extending the reach of their results, and building a bit of brand awareness. The only real objection we had was from Google - probably since they resell their entire package anyway and we'ren't prepared to give it away. Most of the feedback we've had from the other search engines is, yes use our top results but make sure people are aware of the origin and make sure they can link directly to us, which we have done.
As far as marketing goes, we've got a few things in mind, but are going to take it a little easy to start with. There are limits to the code we've used and can't support infinite users. There is few quid left in the bank so want to publicise it through the UK internet press as well as online. I personally (not an opinion shared by my colleagues) believe that it can do quite well just on its own merits, for example, IXQuick do no significant marketing I am aware of, yet they are one of the most popular tools out there.
Anyway, back to the grind stone! :)
Some comments/feedback -
Under the results eg
"7 results : Excite Lycos(x3) ODP UKDirectory Yahoo "
It would be nice if these linked to the source complete with query - would allow me to see the position and competition :)
The "moonmist recommends" --- are these the goto & espotting results?
On the tests I tried the quality of these sites were well bellow those of the meta search ... one was an affilliate scam with pop ups all over the shop.
Good luck with your development and don't work too hard - 4.51am yikes ;)
>>It would be nice if these linked to the source complete with query - would allow me to see the position and competition
Good point - certainly something we will add. Unfortunately we have to wait for traffic to slow down a bit before we can make alterations to things like that since the server needs to be restarted to install the COM - looks like it might be a late night for someone! :(
Yes - the recommended results are goto feeds and are the only real source of revenue for the site (servers cost money you know :) ). We are more than likely going to remove the Espotting results since they want to have them positioned where Goto are situated and there just isn't enough room - we'll see what they say.
Sorry if you're sick of the sound of it, but we have this directory we want to run along side the metasearch, which is based around ODP and our own submissions (from about 6 months back).
Problem we have is that we can't fit as much description in as dmoz provide so we need the entry checked by a real person before we make it active (looks daft if a sentence is split in ...
half)
Unfortunately, if a site is listed more than once with ODP then they may receive our email to confirm their entry for each one.
I refuse to read through 80,000 descriptions (no matter how interesting it may be ;) ) - we've made about 20000 corrections in less than a week, so it does actually work, next batch goes out in about 10 days - you may hear from me again I'm afraid.
We are however going to improve the email in future so you don't have to visit the site to check it, the details that need confirming will be sent in the email, and you need only do anything if it's not right.
Blimey, is that the time!
