Cranky.com: Search Engine for Aging Baby-Boomers
17 January 2007 07:50 AM | Search Engines
New Search Engine for Aging
Boomers. It appears that web
search confuses and frustrates people over 50. So
somebody has invented the aptly named:
Cranky a search engine for
aging boomers. Cranky is a part of a larger portal
and social network for people 50+ called
Eons.
The interesting part is that the core of Cranky is a directory of 5000 sites the Cranky editors have identified as being useful and of interest to age 50+ people. I'm not sure who is providing backfill results for when there is nothing in the directory to match a query but somebody has to, I cannot imagine a search engine being considered relevant for very long with only 5000 or even 500,000 sites indexed in this day and age. I can see giving pages from those 5,000 core sites preference in the SERP's.
To eliminate confusion, Cranky only gives 4 results on the first page of the SERP's. Personally I find this annoying, but this allegedly is to minimize overwhelming aging boomers with too much info.
From a business angle Cranky is a good idea: aiming a search site at a marketing demographic rather than a subject or geographic area since it will be easier to sell advertising to Madison Avenue traditional ad agencies that way.
The two parts that particularly interest me is 1.) the targeting of a marketing demographic (ie. aging baby boomers), with what is really a directory (here I was just saying directories are dead (silly me)) which I find exciting and a good idea for niche directories, and 2.) finding out which search engine is providing search backfill (un-human edited or ranked results) if any, for the Cranky search engine.
Source: Search Engine Land
The interesting part is that the core of Cranky is a directory of 5000 sites the Cranky editors have identified as being useful and of interest to age 50+ people. I'm not sure who is providing backfill results for when there is nothing in the directory to match a query but somebody has to, I cannot imagine a search engine being considered relevant for very long with only 5000 or even 500,000 sites indexed in this day and age. I can see giving pages from those 5,000 core sites preference in the SERP's.
To eliminate confusion, Cranky only gives 4 results on the first page of the SERP's. Personally I find this annoying, but this allegedly is to minimize overwhelming aging boomers with too much info.
From a business angle Cranky is a good idea: aiming a search site at a marketing demographic rather than a subject or geographic area since it will be easier to sell advertising to Madison Avenue traditional ad agencies that way.
The two parts that particularly interest me is 1.) the targeting of a marketing demographic (ie. aging baby boomers), with what is really a directory (here I was just saying directories are dead (silly me)) which I find exciting and a good idea for niche directories, and 2.) finding out which search engine is providing search backfill (un-human edited or ranked results) if any, for the Cranky search engine.
Source: Search Engine Land
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