Tonight’s debate topic is Games search engines, and our participants really know their stuff - alternative search engines Wazap! (J. P. Sherman) and GameSkoot (Philippe Corrot)



Q: What is the current state of your vertical; Games search?

The current state of games search as well as niche search in general, is in its infancy. The basic job of the search engine is to connect a user with the information they want to see. Niche search engines fill a gap in the users’ need by attempting to provide a platform where users can search and find information from sites within that niche. Gaming search engines like Wazap!, GameSkoot, Gazerk or GenieKnows all try to capture people who are interested in games and ultimately send them to the information they’re looking for. This, in and of itself, is no different than Google’s stated goal to index the world’s information and make it available to people. The goal for a gaming search engine is not to make their results more relevant than Google’s, Yahoo’s or MSN’s, but to provide the most relevant information to gamers, which is much more than just a semantic difference. Gaming search engines must know the language, the habits, the “inside jokes” and the needs of gamers. Google’s job is to be neutral in delivering information, gaming search engines must deliver what gamers want in a way that they can use.

Alternative search engines currently face a huge challenge: getting a share of market trusted by Google. Nevertheless, vertical search engines still have an opportunity to catch an audience and create stickiness. It is our view that the video games market provides a real opportunity due the very specific nature of its audience and habits. Offering a more specialized and editorially enforced search pattern such as the one provided by GameSkoot’s Gamesrank is a key success factor. Wazap! currently leads the games search market due to its longer existence but GameSkoot and Genieknows are serious challengers.

Q: Can you elaborate on some of the similarities and differences between Game search engines?

The similarities of the gaming search engines are nothing unique. Most of them filter results by type, they all give the user a basic, linear results page and they all, ultimately, send the user offsite to the information they want. Gazerk uses a third party search engine called Kosmix and GameSkoot uses one called Exalead to power their search results. GenieKnows uses its own search engine to power its game search as well as its health and local searches. Wazap! uses its proprietary algorithm to provide results. The result of all this is that niche search engines have yet to reliably capture the complexity of search technology, the disintermediation between the user and the results and the sheer power of the Google algorithm. The unique functions are quite pronounced. GameSkoot has an interesting advanced search filter where you can call out different sites and themes. Wazap!’s unique features include customizable search RSS feeds, a real time news update, social functionality, a game database and the ability to rate, comment and bookmark search results. Only on Wazap! could a gamer search for the term “Nintendo wii star wars games” and then add that result page to their RSS feed reader. As soon as Wazap! indexes new information that matches that custom query, the user would get that information on their computer or mobile internet device.

One of the more interesting differentiations about Wazap! is that it focuses around the social networks of eSports, or competitive gaming, as well as massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Worldwide, there’s a growing movement in not only numbers, but mainstream acceptance of gaming as a professional sport. Wazap!, being an international company is positioned well to provide information to the casual gamer, the hard core gamer and the professional gamer. As more people are playing eSports, more people are going to be watching them and keeping track of scores, stats, videos, rematches and other forms of information and media. Again, the key to the gaming search engine as well as any niche engine is how tapped in to the audience they are. For example, Mousesports a pro gaming community has partnered with Wazap! to bring their skills to a large audience with Wazap!.

The major difference is that GameSkoot is still in beta version and important indexation work is still ahead of us. Wazap! is way ahead in terms of user experience. To that matter it is almost closer to a media website than a traditional search engine. GameSkoot works hand in hand with Exalead to develop its search engine granting us a real technological edge which will likely be a key success factor.

Q: Can you make some predictions about the future of Games search?

The future of niche search will have to rely on the community it serves. Other than creating an algorithm that’s better than Google’s, niche search engines will have to leverage the expertise and participation of its users to augment, enhance and influence the relevancy of results to provide better results. Wazap!, Gazerk and GenieKnows all provide results that are filtered with the type of information the user wants, yet only Wazap! gives the user the ability to rank, comment and tag the search results to enhance the user experience for others as well as allowing other users to find the same information they found useful. Other than Wazap!, which has an entire database of games to browse, the challenge for gaming search engines is that most of them don’t do anything that Google doesn’t already do. Searching Google for the term “gears of war” gives the user the option to filter what type of results they’d like to see. Therefore just filtering isn’t something that makes a gaming search engine unique. Most of the gaming search engines point to the information and the conversations about games, Wazap! becomes an extension of that conversation by allowing user ratings, comments, bookmarks and other aspects of social media. Niche search engines will have to recognize the surrounding community aspect of games and the social aspect that these games inspire.

Niche search engines will also have to become a part of the gaming community it serves. Whether the niche is gaming, dogs or music, the search engine must participate in those communities. They must come to the realization that for as long as Google, MSN and Yahoo continue to dominate the search market, gamers will have a place to search for information. What will be different about niche engines is the community participation in the results, the comments and the entire experience of looking for information.

Being vertical guarantees more precise search results especially in our ability to organise results in adequate categories. The larger the indexed content gets, the more challenging it will be for a universal Google to offer precise and organized search results. Google also faces the challenge of answering the community need particularly in the video games sector. This leaves a real opportunity for vertical search engines. One may foresee the birth of vertical search engine aggregators…2020’s Google

Continuing the Discussion

Lastly, I’d like to present a question to the other gaming search engines and to the readers of AltSearchEngines. It’s no secret that Google doesn’t consider other search engines to be “relevant” to their users and frequently ranks their results lesser than other sites. How do niche engines survive in a marketplace that’s dominated by other search engines that really don’t give their service relevancy? When we collect, categorize and distribute information to our users, doesn’t that give niche search engines relevancy? Or is this a case where Google’s using its monolithic status to passively squelch competition?

Readers and Alt Search Engines, care to comment on that (or any other part of the debate)? The comments area is now open!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 7:01 pm and is filed under Debates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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