Archive: May, 2008

Yesterday’s Webcology on WebmasterRadio.fm was one of those shows I truly love doing, a conversation with an old friend. Our guest was Gary Price, one of those people who have had an extraordinary impact on the evolution of the search and Internet environment.

Gary was one of the original editors of Search Engine Watch. Before working with Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman, Gary had established the extremely successful Librarian focused information site, ResourceShelf.com. After leaving Search Engine Watch, Gary became the chief evangelist for Ask.com, working directly with Ask’s former (and beloved) CEO Jim Lanzone during Ask’s most innovate period. He was let go from Ask in early March following Lanzone’s replacement as CEO by Jim Safka when Ask laid-off many of the team that made Ask so innovative. In 2001, Gary wrote a book with Chris Sherman, “The Invisible Web: Uncovering Information Sources Search Engines Can’t See” about the Deep Web, a topic I wrote about earlier this week.

Gary came on Webcology yesterday to address Googlebot and the Deep Web. While he was there, he spoke a bit about Ask.com and the aftermath of the layoffs. It was a grand conversation. Click on the player to listen in.

Working in search, it is difficult to remain optimistic and hopeful for smaller, independent search entities. The competition is fierce and the financial stakes are far higher than in most business sectors. Everyone is scared of the Big G, even a company as massive as Microsoft.

I spent 2006 and much of 2007 thinking and writing about alternative search engines. When I was recently asked to write a longer piece on a Canadian based search engine, I knew it would be a challenging assignment.

A couple of weeks ago, the fine folks at Search Engine Strategies asked me to write a piece about the independent Halifax based search engine, GenieKnows. It was a difficult piece to write for a number of reasons but the greatest challenge was in figuring out why the general public would use GenieKnows (or any other search engine) in place of Google.

It didn’t take GenieKnows PR director Mark Harper long to show GenieKnow’s strongest tool, one that differentiates it from competitors, even those as large as Google.