Think we can see now where the submission fee is going
P.S just on another note, had a interesting phone call with goto, this is all very new being able to "talk" to a SE over the phone :) so just taken my first steps with some bids it will be interesting to see how long it takes before the min bid of 5p get's nowhere
Looks horribly like the Just35 concept - but doesn't hurt the eyes so much.
Stand by for the launch of web33.con and
no-more-than-50.co.yuk to be launched soon.
Did a search for one of my clients and was surprised to see it listed only to find it a dead link after clicking on it, error message came up asking me to send an e-mail to them, MMMM different way of marketing your services to a company, contact them informing the client his site is indexed in their database but until he pays know one can veiw it.
Perhaps just call me cynical ;)
unfotunatley in this world of the net, getting your site address out to mr & mrs surfer is what it's all about, excite.co.uk have just finished a massive advertising campaign in the south coast on just about every bus shelter I passed god knows how much that must have cost, it would be interesting to know just how much their traffic jumped by
One was Green (coloured not EF)owned by a very large newspaper group.MUCHO advertising!!!!! Launched in Essex and with promises of copies in ever major business, I signed up for 375 quids worth (after a bit of haggling) It hit the streets with a whimp rather than a bang - I asked 5 major clients if they had copies of the Green Pages and got a blank stare!! When the invoice arrived it was faxed back with a message "See you in Court". They phoned me and decided not to pursue it (I think I paid them £50.00 as a comprimise)
The point is that 10 years on SE's are all over the place - 6 that produce traffic 46 that dont and out of those Sid Searcher can name two of them and will use whichever is on his ISP. So why would anybody part with maoney for a SE that hasn't even got to the taxiway let alone just taking off!
Victor Meldrew lives on in Essex :)
I have now had a Hit from Essex Pages which produced some biz - that cost £35.00 for the year- is widely advertised throughout the county yet, hasn't exactly rattled the Inbox.
We're creating a directory and a UK-based search engine at the moment. The directory has already been published URL snipped. NFFC, though publicity has not yet started in earnest. The site has proved extremely popular so far, and we're receiving a lot of good feedback.
Let me know what you think!
About good UK search engines; we've been researching the SE environment for a while now and I agree, there are no really decent engines. You can't rely on the big six to give a decent response to a UK query alone, so what alternatives are there? Directories or search engines.
This is basically the reason no decent maintained SEs exist in the UK (IMHO).
But, so we don't fall into the same trap - what kind of services do _you_ expect from a search engine?
I would hate to put a development team together and have them working for say 6 months, only to have their product criticised as much as I see here and in other locations!
I would be really interested to hear your opinions. Answers on a postcard to....
All the best
Phil
I've not had time to look at your site but a quick reply (IMHO) a UK based search engine is only as good as the marketing/ advertising then results. Some of the search engines that have been mentioned in the uk forum are good, but the problem is no one uses them or knows them.
Ask most people in the UK to name some and you'll be lucky if 5 or 6 come up, maybe one reason why Lycos is putting it's hand in it's pocket and they have a very deep one at that.
I'll have look tomorrow and will look forward to hearing more from you in the forum
Straight and to the point but maybe a bit to direct for me, but great domian name, did you know that it's still available ;)
Yep, yep, yep! nooneeverusesthem.co.uk is a popular concept, and there are plenty of directories and SEs out there that deserve the accolade.
Probably some of the problem has been caused by the fact that lots of people thought that what the UK really needed was a directory service, rather than a search engine infrastructure. As usual, they could see a direct correlation between directory entries and advertising revenue, leading to a number of half-****ed approaches, unfinished projects and poor implementations.
Directory services like Just35, UK250 and one or two others have tried to advance on these early failures, but as stated earlier in the thread, who'd want to pay £375/annum for an entry on an unpublicised and unheard-of internet directory service?
This was how we started, but quickly realised that we were going to go nowhere, even though the site became used by a considerable number of surfers (I've never met anyone who's heard of us!)
That's why, apart from a couple of other applications that we have planned, we would really like to create a federalised UK search engine. We have a development team who have knocked up some early spider technologies and we are pretty happy with these early efforts.
But what we really want is to hear what you guys want in a search engine. How can an engine serve you, as well as those people on the other end, the users?
All the bets
Phil
You say (re categories) "but including a maximum of 20 entries in each"
Many of the categories hold more than this number already, I noticed a couple standing at 29. Are you going to stick to the 'maximum'? If so, I presume you will further subdivide. I think this will be necessary anyway, for instance a hostel site was placed under hotels.
As you are including non uk sites, limiting to this number will leave out many excellent uk sites
With regard to "publicity has not yet started in earnest", when and how are you going to do this? Have you started yet to get it indexed by the major search engines/directories. It is not yet listed by any that I could find.
>But what we really want is to hear what you guys want in a search engine. How can an engine serve you, as well as those people on the other end, the users
In a nutshell
1. accuracy
2. well known by everyone.
3. ease of use
"as with many when they start" could probably be re-written "until the money runs out", but I agree with your sentiments, and thanks for investigating the site by the way!
You've noticed immediately the difference between 'information' sites and commercial sites. Where we're provising information, our best 10-20 goes out of the window and we show all we can (ie UK police forces, and others)
The main reason there are a number of 'commercial' categories with more than 20 is 100% down to me. I have been too tardy to give the ed team a simple mechanism for reducing the numbers simply. It's ready, I just haven't rolled it out yet. It's coming!
I agree that many excellent sites may be left out - we can only include in these pages what we know about - but we've already had situations where we've had submissions from the web and these have taken the place of other sites because we felt their content was superior and more relevant to UK surfers etc.
As for publicity, and SEs, we receive perhaps 100 searches/day from Google, 50 from AV and a smattering from some others. I noticed today, being the anorac that I am that if you enter 'asktheinter' in Google (as if you wuld!) it responds with 29 pages of data... so they're in there somewhere... some mistakes, but that's been resolved and they've just een resubmitted.
Publicity itself, advertising spend, marketing - these are things we have left until the completion of our proof of concept. We've taken it as far as we can without help, and now we need to look elsewhere for help. This process is now underway, and hopefully we can report back soon with a development plan for the next 12 months, both for the directory as well as the SE and the other apps we have planned.
Thanks for the 1/2/3 wants from a SE. Tell me though, how you quantify accuracy?
I agree with 2 & 3, but would like to know how G/AV/Y etc rank on point 3 (ease of use) from surfers perspective.
Phil
