Six Secrets of Highly Successful Alternative Search Engines!
By Guest Author Nitin Karandikar
There are hundreds of alternate search engines - my friend Charles Knight keeps a running list of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, see: June Top 100 on this blog (updated monthly) - but some are clearly gaining traction faster than others. In this post, we take a look at some of these successful alternate search engines: What are the secrets of their success? What makes them stand out from the crowd?
To begin with, what does it mean for a search engine to be successful? Since different sites have different goals, we will take a look at engines that stand out in some way: either in terms of large amounts of traffic, or a large mindshare within a given domain, or in generating buzz. In the same vein as the Top 100 list, this is a subjective look at a few successful sites. Not all of these are, strictly speaking, search engines - but perhaps that’s part of the secret - search is more effective when it’s part of a bigger picture!
So without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the unique strategies used by successful alt-search-engines.
- Relentless Focus - SimplyHired
If it has to do with job search, SimplyHired is there! Over the past couple of years, this vertical search engine for jobs has added a variety of specialized features guaranteed to generate buzz. These features include specialty searches like dog-friendly and eco-friendly companies, automated posting to multiple job boards, RSS and email alerts, job “suggestions”, publisher widgets, and even the fun site, SimplyFired . This type of all-consuming focus may not be sufficient in itself if the underlying search solution is not effective or useful; but it is certainly necessary for success! - Business Utility - LinkedIn
LinkedIn is rapidly becoming an indispensable business tool. Unlike the limited applications of the past, this service has jumped the “people networking” boundaries traditionally limited to the Sales/Marketing/BizDev functions. Within the technology community especially, users from all disciplines - from Engineering to Customer support - regularly use it for staying connected with others.Anecdotal evidence suggests that LinkedIn is increasingly being used for business-oriented “people search” as well - both to reconnect with colleagues and associates from the past, as well as to create new connections. Its big advantage is that results are actionable: if you find the person you’re looking for, you can immediately proceed to the next step - send an email, get introduced, or add the person to your network, which in turn ensures that you won’t lose touch with them in the future. As network effects kick in, this service will get progressively more valuable. - Proprietary Information - Zillow
Zillow.com, a real estate search engine, offers some information that’s extremely interesting to home owners and home buyers, information that they cannot easily find anywhere else on the web. The Zestimate™ home valuation is Zillow’s estimated market value, computed using a proprietary formula. Admittedly, there is some debate about the home valuations provided; nevertheless, once they hear about it, few homeowners (or buyers) can resist visiting the site to “check it out” (not even Bill Gates !). Thus, the home valuation information works like a magnet to draw people in, leading them most naturally to the Zillow search feature, which further keeps them on the site. Clearly, Zillow is on to a good thing with Zestimate! - Community Power - del.icio.us
del.icio.us, the most successful of the “social bookmarking” solutions, bubbles up some fascinating information. Interestingly, the collective intelligence component is an implicit part of the service; rather than users explicitly recommending items (which is subject to the “dumbness of crowds“), users simply bookmark items in their own self-interest, and the intelligence comes from analyzing aggregate behavior.When you search for a term in del.icio.us, then, you usually get high-quality, popular results. This doesn’t work for all searches (such as obscure information), but when looking for high-quality articles, it works very well indeed. - Hyperlocal Context - Topix.com
Topix.com focuses on aggregating local news from many different sources. By providing strong news coverage for very narrow geographical areas, it has created a dominant position in its niche. This makes it an ideal site when searching for local news. This strategy, of providing wide coverage through the aggregation of many local markets, can inspire tremendous loyalty among search users and help create a strong community. - Thought Leadership - Hakia
Hakia is a new, general-purpose search engine that has been leading a discussion on Semantic Search within the Internet Search community. Apart from thoughtful posts on the corporate blog, Hakia has an ongoing discussion going on at a special community site: Search for Better Search. Key members of the Hakia leadership team also engage the community on the theory and challenges of semantic search. While this does not directly influence user traffic, it generates plenty of buzz within the blogerati, whose influence on the community at large continues to grow.
Thus, these different engines are using very different strategies to gain traction and increase user traffic; clearly there is no one way to search engine stardom. However, all of the search engines covered here seem to have two things in common: (i) they provide strong utility to the user, and (ii) they do something special to stand out from the crowd.
No doubt there are many other successful approaches not covered here. If you belong to or are a fan of a search engine that’s growing in popularity and has a unique approach, email us or add a comment, and let us know!
