It’s official: We swapped out Yahoo!’s Search API for our own index and crawler over at MetaMojo.com.
No, we’re not taking on Google, Yahoo! MSN or Ask.com, we’re simply making room in the back of the room, trying to see what holes we can fill out in the ever-growing market that is the search industry. I worked for about nine months at a meta-search engine back in 2000, and from 2000-05, I worked in online publishing; suffice to say that we saw a vacuum (I just had to triple check that vacuum has two u’s and not two c’s - what a funny looking word…) and believe that there is still plenty of room to offer readers a different search experience, and sometimes, a better one.
MetaMojo.com: A Domain Specific Vertical Search Engine
For more on MetaMojo.com, visit the About page.
MetaMojo.com is complementary to the mass market search engines out there. And, in some instances, it can provide a better search (whatever that means).
Take two examples:
Scenario 1: Personalization I
Little Jimmy has a history essay to write on World War II, he wants historical information on the city of Berlin, so by searching for Berlin in a historical context, he gets results on Berlin from historical sources.
Meanwhile, across town, John and Susan are planning for their honeymoon and want travel related sources on Berlin, by searching for Berlin in a travel context, they get the results they are looking for.
Scenario 2: Quality and Authority in a Chaotic World [Wide Web]
In a former life, I was the resident interviewer for a men’s lad mag. I’d be called to interview a range of people from Jenna Jameson, to Avril Lavigne, Hugh Hefner, Joe Montana and John F. Kennedy (all right, I never interviewed JFK, but only because I was born fifteen years after he was killed). The point is that I had to interview a wide array of known and less well known people who had very little in common. I would have to research these people, and suffice to say, the sources I’d find online were less than reliable.
Case in point: if you search for Christina Aguilera, for example, on Google or on Yahoo! - you get great, relevant results. But maybe I am biased, but I am not all that interested in getting a bunch of fan sites, or even her official site (those would all be biased). I want to know what the best publishers in music and entertainment have to say about her. Enter MetaMojo.com’s approach and the results we bring you.
No one is arguing that MetaMojo.com is better (more relevant) than Google or Yahoo!’s result, but it does seem less repetitive or cluttered, doesn’t it?
MetaMojo.com’s Defensibility: Search Within Mojo Supreme; All Else is Bonus
I am always asked if the world needs another search engine. Well, Google was asked the same thing. Of course, the difference is that when Google was being hatched, the business model for search was in its premature stages; GoTo.com’s Bill Gross had thought about it, but the market was not proven. Advertisers were game, but consumer reaction to the pay-per-click model was untested.
In fact, had the Nasdaq not crashed, and the VC money not dried up, who knows? Maybe CPM buys would have kept the dot com bubble afloat and no one would have asked for CPC buys, and thus, no pay-per-click explosion and Google would have had to sell to someone.
Of course, history has a funny way of unfolding. The point is that when it comes to Web search for text content, no company will overtake Google as the main player, I’ll be the first to admit that.
Google has just under 50% market share alone and through partnerships it commands over 50%. It is the biggest player in the biggest sub-sector of the fastest growing segment of advertising: online. If online ads will grow to a $32 billion market by 2010 and paid search will account for 40% of that, or $12.8 billion, and Google commands 50% of that, it will be almost impossible to dethrone Google. Google is so scaleable as a search business that it will be a profit machine for years to come… so long as the paid search market does not get derailed. But more on this later.
Yahoo! is a distant second and MSN a distant third (today Steve Ballmer announced it will spend $7.5 billion in overall R&D in 2007, I’d surmise that MSN’s market share in search might not be materially higher next year), Ask.com is headed in the right direction but is an afterthought at number four. This is not to say that anyone should count out the butler (oh, wait, he’s gone). It’s certainly not to suggest that anyone should discount Barry Diller. With Ask.com in his hands, I would not rule out anything, just a quick example: IAC also bought CollegeHumor.com, imagine if every college kid that goes to CollegeHumor learns to use Ask.com… as that kid goes to become a young professional, he is practically engineered to stick to Ask.com. Maybe, maybe not, but you get the idea.
What Can the Butler Teach Us?
But Ask.com is an interesting case to examine. When InterActive Corp.’s Barry Diller paid $1.8 billion for Ask Jeeves, some wondered if it was a good idea. It was. Whatever the specific reasons for that deal, to me, it made sense: if Barry Diller envisioned building his media empire on the world wide web, it only made sense to have a search platform inside his kingdom and not have to rely on a partner. Yahoo! learned this the hard way, too late to catch up Google. Of course, it does not help that Yahoo! used Google’s search and propelled it to the top.
The Future of Search
In many ways, that is why I believe that if Mojo Supreme is to grow and become a successful media company in the next 1, 3, 5, 10 or 25 years, then it only makes sense not to have to count on outsiders for our search strategy. Nine months after Mojo Supreme’s official launch, the company has published over 2,500 original video clips and encompasses a digital media network with over 10,000 pages of content… and much, much more to come. As the content and traffic grow, we need a site and web search platform, and it made no sense to look outside, especially since we have some aces up our sleeves in emerging areas like video and mobile search.
That is why despite the institutional imperative, we decided to invest in our own index and crawler and eventually replace the Yahoo! API.
Today is the fulfilment of that decision.
The Human Touch: Personalization II
Earlier on, we talked a bit about Google’s scaleability. Indeed, Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask all have a certain approach to text-based search on the Web. All have been rewarded as leaders in a competitive and lucrative industry.
But call me crazy (please, do; I’ve been called worst!) but I think that a human touch goes a long way, especially online. That’s another thing about MetaMojo.com. While the world wide web seems to reward anything that automates X and accelerates Y, there is room for - sit down, take a deep breath - a human being’s judgment. Google has already demonstrated an aversion to this approach (and rewarded with a market cap north of $120 billion), and its competitors have to race against time to catch Google up.
No one, I think, is crazy enough to approach web search the way we do. And that’s great.
Last but not least, you’ll notice that when I was talking about Google’s lead in search, I stressed text-based web search.
Text-based web search, while enormous in itself, is a fraction of the overall search dilemma.
Search’s ultimate battleground may have started online, but it will extend in many different places… and when it does, we look forward to having Google kick our asses there.
Jokes aside (were we kidding?), for the foreseeable future, MetaMojo.com will thrive within the Mojo Supreme network, as WatchMojo.com grows, so will MetaMojo.com; as StreetMojo.com grows, so will MetaMojo.com; as TenMojo.com grows, so will MetaMojo.com; as BloggerMojo.com grows… you get the idea.
Everything else is bonus.
All to say, now that the Proprietary Index and Crawler are implemented, we’ll be playing quite a bit with improving it, improving functionality and adding a bunch of features we’ve been planning to launch!
For more info on MetaMojo.com, check out the Tenets.
Questions, feedback or suggestions, drop me a line at ash(at)mojosupreme.com.
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October 25th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
[…] Short term, it would be simpler to simply partner with one of these companies, but looking out 1, 3 or 5 years, I am maniacal about my belief that MetaMojo.com can be an important player in the space. For more on MetaMojo.com, check out my comments upon the official launch here. […]
November 11th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
[…] - Google would remain the top search engine for good, it currently boasts nearly 50% market share. Who else could gain traction when #2 Yahoo! is a distant second with 30% market share; #3 MSN is at 10%, #4 Ask is at 5%, #5 AOL is at 4%. Go ahead, I know you want to, add it up. That’s right, the top 5 players hold onto 99% of the market. Then why did we launch MetaMojo.com - the domain specific vertical search engine? Read on here. But the fact is, if tomorrow a bust took place, it would be hard for other startup companies like Turn or Powerset to hurt Google in the long term. After all, these companies have just secured initial VC financing and really putting a dent in Google’s business will require additional funding - there is no guarantee that VCs would maintain their risk appetite in a post-burst environment. […]