A Google Killer?: The Search Business Model That Gives The Sites They Index A Fair Cut

The way the search business currently functions (and has since the dawn of…Google) no money exchanges hands between the search engines and the sites they index. Just about all web sites and the companies running them allow all search engines the same access to their data – the web sites clearly benefiting from the traffic driven from popping up in search results and the search engines benefiting from search ad revenue. The way the search business is modeled at the moment – a virtual free-for-all – we have yet to find a search engine that’s really come close to Google-killer status.

The notion that search engines should be paying these sites for the rights to index their copyrighted content has been raised before. News sites in particular have taken issue with Google in the past for extracting blurbs from their content – giving web users the ability to get the answers to their questions solely from the abstract in the search results without even having to click on the link. In these instances, Google has more or less “stolen” their content and, more importantly, their ability to make money off of it.

So what sorts of solutions are being proposed? And what sort of search business model would it take to beat Google? In an interesting article by Mark Cuban back in May on Digital Media Wire he toys with the idea that big players like MS or Yahoo can offer sites big money to block Google – to ask to be removed from the Google Index.

“Mahalo.com thinks it needs to support the 25k most common search terms in order to be successful. What would happen if MicroSoft or Yahoo or a MicroHoo went to the 5 top results for the top 25k searches and paid them to leave the Google Index?”

Certainly a different way to approach things and it just might work if the companies behind these Top 5 search results are willing participants in this great Google-killing venture out to degrade their index (and if the money was right). But isn’t that a sort of short term fix? Aren’t these top search terms and top search results in flux? Would a one-time payout be alluring enough to pull these companies away from a top traffic driver (and continuous money-maker) that has been so dependable for so long?

Dumbfounder believes the logical direction for the search business model to take is that these web sites comprising popular search results and giving the search engines their inherent value should receive payment from the engines in the form of shared search ad revenue. For example, they should be paid based on the clicks they receive in organic search results – receiving a cut of the ad revenue the search engine is receiving on that page…and in general making everyone happy that the search engines exist (beyond driving them traffic…and stealing copyrighted content).

Is this a Google-killing concept? Well it does offer a bit more of a more two-way search business model in a time when everyone – particularly media companies – are figuring out a way to better monetize their web presence. This model also addresses the copyright issue in a fair and scaleable manner of pay-out. As folks become more and more fascinated with the idea of a Google-killer (note: Cuil buzz and blow-up), the idea of a shake-up such as this in the search engine business is getting more likely.

A Special Thanks to CERN: Large Hadron Collider Spares Us Fate Worse Than Shelley Long Movie Marathon

We can all let out a big "phew" this fine morning of September 10, 2008 as Stephen Hawking, the folks at CERN, and the Large Hadron Collider (particle-smasher extraordinaire) have not allowed us all to be sucked into Europe and nothingness by a black hole. Stephen Hawking did not predict, however, the ensuing twitter-mania (twitter search shows "The LHC" as the trending topic du jour) - edging out Sarah Palin in a close, close non-Presidential race.

In other news, failure of The LHC to destroy earth is the leading cause of us all having to go to work today...and repeatedly playing role of Captain Obvious (www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com)

Read about The LHC on Searchles as well (social search!). It's a great day to be alive...

Taking YOU Into Account: What's The "Right Way" For News Sites To Integrate Social Media?

Comments, profiles, “friends”, reader blogs, forums, recommendations, thumbs up, thumbs down…eesh – news sites both fear playing host to social media features and have come to recognize that these site-interactions create the engaging social experiences around their content that will drive the page views and ad revenue they so desperately need (hold the phone, here’s a question – why does MS Word still put the squiggly red line under the word blog?). Here are some common questions these media companies are asking themselves as they reach out into the social web - figuring out what exactly they want to hold onto:

Does the news site want to host these user-profile/social networking pages or pawn it off to a third-party platform with the site’s frame around it?

Is it better to surface news from other sources for a site’s user community? Are there advantages to a centralized platform that hosts users across different sites interacting?

Data portability may also pose a major problem. Where does the data reside? Once news sites go with one social platform can they switch or are they locked-in?

Filtering spam? Inappropriate content? Is the world going to end if someone drops the eff-bomb? Trials, tribulations…and spam’s a question for another day. Back to addressing the first few questions regarding use of a centralized or site-specific platform to provide social networking for a user-community:


Pluck’s SiteLife Social platform is currently powering the social networks on washingtonpost.com’s Discussion Groups section, USAToday, and Discovery’s Planet Green among others. Pluck provides user-profiles, reader blogs, forums, photos, friending capabilities, and also indexes the comments users have recently made and the corresponding articles on their profiles. The social network is hosted on washingtonpost.com, for example, and the profiles are specific to that site – there are no links put forth by the Pluck platform that would lead a reader elsewhere. What are the advantages? Keeping the reader on-site as they weave through forums and other profiles does up the page views for washingtonpost.com – and I feel as though it works for the Discussion Group communities because it has found its niche in debating politics (woo hooo DC). This community common-denominator provides enough material and interaction that users may very well stay engaged enough to keep clicking around and kicking up page views – same goes for the Planet Green community and the Green niche (so hot right now).


What can be an issue with this sort of set-up is the fact that web users generally like to consult multiple news sources in a sitting and may not want their identity and their comments tied to one site, one contained community. This is where a platform like Topix steps into the game. Topix powers the social network and comment-engine for Chicago Tribune, but it also integrates its own social news destination site that features localized content across different news sources. Clicking on “read comments” at the bottom of Tribune articles takes you to a co-branded page hosted by Topix itself within the Tribune’s frame. Clicking around between profiles, forums, and headlines within the Topix platform easily leads you to non-Tribune content but the Tribune frame remains (page views!...ad revenue!) and the user can comment on any content or post to any forum that Topix surfaces and have it track back to their Topix profile/persona.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each. The Topix profile gives the Tribune a chance to be a jumping off point for content-discovery, offers a portable identity where a user can interact with multiple content sources without multiple usernames, and in the short-term is easy on the implementation side of things – but it’s not true integration with the site. What are the chances that a user will migrate back to Tribune pages? Will they associate this social experience with the Tribune? Having to actually register with Topix is also another roadblock that some users may not migrate past on the Tribune site. The Pluck platform keeps users loyal to the washingtonpost.com or USAToday pages – but how sticky is that? How many clicks until a reader feels as though they’ve just hit a dead-end?

In general these news site-social platform partnerships need to get authentication down correctly so that users just create one login on-site. They also need to create more tools that can be plugged-into various parts of the site – the forums, blogs, comments, live chats, etc. – so that these pieces of content are surfaced and users can navigate from their profile or personalized homepage to these various social media features seamlessly. If news sites going to go to all the trouble of social media implementation, there’s no use in having a disconnect between the reader-generated blogs and the user’s forum activities. Ultimately the real kicker is how strong the sense of community is on-site. Users go to the trouble of logging-in and associating themselves with an identity, because when they comment or post they want someone else on your site to read it and/or respond.