New directory/meta-search

[carlwright]

We've recently finished developing a new UK specific meta-search and directory and are looking for webmasters who may be interested in putting it through its paces! We've got most of the big players as well as UK only search engines in the meta (all but Google unfortunately - who wanted 50 grand!), so are confident that your favourite engines can be catered as well as some new ones. Let us know what you think.

[jimmykav]

can you point us to a url?

[nicebloke]

Just for your info, the welcome.htm page in the site in your profie crashes IE on my Mac.

[NFFC]

It would be nice to put your URL in the profile, any interested members can have a look in there.

[theperlyking]

call me crazy but I went through the url in your profile and actually tried to look for a link to this new meta engine. I found a big search engine page that mentioned nothing about it.

Or is it a new breed of virtual meta search engines where the user manually goes to each search engine so as to emulate a meta search engine :p

[oldtimer]

I've emailed him from his site to ask him to reply to the questions!

[carlwright]

Well I feel a bit of a pratt now! Sorry for not passing on the url ( btw it's www.moonmist.co.uk ).

Just so you know - it's still a bit shakey, the meta-search seems to be working okay, although I have about another half a dozen engines to add in over the next few days (as well as remove google!). The directory probably isn't working properly since we are still trying to get the Full-text service optimised (it's frighteningly slow at the mo'!)

Have a play with the meta though and tell me what you think. The thing isn't set up on the final servers yet so it's not dead fast - however, it's quite fast considering it's sharing a box with about 800 other busy domains!

All the best
Carl

Edited by: engine

[theperlyking]

Check your site in Opera and Netscape.

[carlwright]

is it awful?

[theperlyking]

Your going to launch a meta search engine and havent checked what it looks like?
It looks broken in anything except internet explorer.

[carlwright]

Haven't looked at it in Opera I know - I assumed it had been checked in NS (evidently not though) - shouldn't be too much of a problem getting it sorted though - the thing only consists of a handful of seperate pages, the rest is all dynamic. To be honest though - I wasn't even going to bother with Opera - I didn't think it was hardly used

[theperlyking]

Its gaining popularity all the time, I used it as first choice for your site (in case you think I was just trying opera to test) - then I tried Netscape, my second choice here - finally I launched IE..

I think you'll find quite a few people here use Opera, especially one particular person :)

[carlwright]

I suppose I best install it then - I might make the search engine text only aswell, I noticed that Hotbot and AV have text only versions that are quite popular.

[caine]

carlwright,

Had a play with your engine. Tried the submissions routes, none of them work. Though the results i was getting from the search engines were, relatively accurate.

When will the sub - route's be operational ?

[carlwright]

Hi - we're at least a month of finishing the backend, we've actually yet to decide how we are going to implement it so far as whether we are going to charge for priority listing or not (probably not to start with). Our main concern as far as the directory is concerned is ensuring that anyone in the list has checked and corrected any entries. They are currently made up from the sites meta info, which in most cases is terrible. What we intend to do is give anyone who's in the directory a priority listing in the meta search since that's the core function of the site.

I'll keep you informed

[carlwright]

Are there any other browsers we should accomodate? AOL is IE 5 based is it not?

[theperlyking]

mozilla & konqueror.

[Steph]

i use netscape 4.73, and i can't submit because the buttons doesn't work.
When i make a search, i have a lot of broken image on the result page.
And some text are very, very small

[carlwright]

Yes - I've had a look at the site in both Opera and Netscape and have let the relevant individual know that it's far from perfect so hopefully he'll be on that fairly soon. I'm hoping it's not too much of a big job, but better to get it right at this stage.

Thanks
Carl