Snap.com: The Search Engine that Shares

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July 5, 2005

Snap.com: The Search Engine that Shares

Filed under: General,News — Scott @ 10:31 am

Snap.com is a new search engine released last year(?) sometime that is taking an interesting view on the search world. They are actually sharing their statistics. You can see their financial, advertisors, and search data. It could be useful for search statistics of course, but the quality of the searches and the traffic sources need to be considered.

In this case it appears that most of the traffic is from the U.S.A., so that is good. Some possible downsides is that the traffic seems to be coming from advertising for the search engine. Since the traffic is solocited that could bias the audience in several ways ( what they search for and who the searchers are ). ( look at the referring stats page for verification )

In their blog they let it be known the much of their statistical keyword information comes from other sources that they pay for. I am not sure what sources they use but I would assume that it is as reliable as any other source.

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Another interesting note is that the ad serving model is CPA based. and CPC based. ( details here ) On the surface, the CPA model seems like it could be manipulated to provide a run of “branding” advertisements to generate traffic of name recognition without generating a sale.

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Their blog is open and informative and very direct about their status. It is refreshing that they are not declaring themselves “the breakout search engine” or “the google killer”, I hate hype.

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Now for the important part…. does the horse run? I preformed several searches, the results were relatively slow but they were more likely to be relevent & useful to the query compared to Yahoo and Google. ( I didn’t bother searching MSN, its a spam trap currently IMO )

So I like it…. I don’t know if I’ll use it as my primary search engine but I think I’ll make it my backup.

-FIN-

My search information:
I performed 2 searches for keyword groups I monitor in a commercial sector related to clothing. [sorry no names to prevent copition in my niche ;-) ] I rated it on the top 20 results.

Search #1 ( clothing related ):
Snap:
- No spam
- No affiliates
- Very targeted and appropriate

Google:
- No spam
- No affiliates
- Very targeted and appropriate

Yahoo:
- 4 spam
- No affiliates
- Very targeted and appropriate ( non spam ones )

Search #2 (clothing related):

Snap:
- No spam
- No affiliates
- Very targeted and appropriate

Google:
- 3 spam
- No affiliates
- Very targeted and appropriate

Yahoo:
- 8 spam,
- 5 Affiliates,
- Very targeted and appropriate ( non spam ones )

– other searches…
For “SEO”:
Snap:
- No spam
- Very targeted and appropriate

Google:
- No spam
- No affiliates
- Very targeted and appropriate

Yahoo:
- No spam,
- Very targeted and appropriate

For “koi ponds”:
Snap:
- No spam
- Very targeted and appropriate

Google:
- No spam
- a lot of affiliates/stores
- Very targeted and appropriate