Everything Else

I've written about the now defunct web directory and portal NBCi several times before but I do not think any of those posts survive. The news that Wikia may try a community reviewed search engine brings up the whole issue of human review in search results again and I think it is useful to look at what models have been done before and their strengths and weaknesses. I still morn this portal's passing because it sent me a heck of a lot of traffic while it was in operation.

NBCi was a 3 tier web search incorporating 2 directories listing web sites and a spidering search feed listing web pages.

1st Tier: NBCi Directory - NBCi bought a top quality web directory "Snap" which just like the Yahoo directory, employed professional editors. Snap was a pay-for-review directory and you could always drill down through the categories to find sites. When you did a search on NBCi the very first results you saw were from the Snap directory. Search results from the directory were ranked (ordered) by a technology called GlobalBrain (explanation see ther-search-engines/thread::774/" rel="external">second post) which sort of learned your preferences and the people that performed searches similar to yours (via cookies) and would reorder the search results to give you sites similar to those you already preferred. (FYI: I think some of the GlobalBrain technology continues to be used in Eurekster).

The point is that not only were new sites being added to the directory but those SERP's were also shifting around because of Global Brain rankings. The SERP's did not look static to the end user like a search on the Yahoo Directory might.

2nd Tier: Live Directory - Once you exhausted looking through the SERP's from the NBCi directory you could click on a tab for "Live Directory". Live Directory had the same taxonomy as the NBCi directory, but there was no charge to webmasters for listing in the Live Directory. I believe sites submitted got just a quick review for spam and became part of the directory listings quite quickly. Websites listed in the Live directory were allowed to select about 6 keywords, my memory is dim on this but it may be that directory searches only used those keywords and not the title or description. Again, on Live Directory, the search results were enhanced by GlobalBrain.

However, listing was only provisional and sites had to show a certain popularity of click thru's as measured by GlobalBrain in order to stay in the Live Directory. Sites that showed exceptional popularity could also get promoted free of charge to the top level NBCi directory which was worth much more in terms of traffic. On that score NBCi had a nice viral marketing tool - because they told the submitting webmaster to tell their freinds about NBCi and to click on your site - the more different IP's that clicked on a listing the bigger the chance was that your site would get promoted to a free top level directory listing. A lot of content webmasters, myself included, got their friends introduced to NBCi because of this and it was an important way for content sites to gain entry into the top level directory so it did not become full of commercial only listings. I am not sure how well the Live directory would hold up to today's automated spam submissions and automated clickbots, but I still like the idea of a live directory like that and i think you could guard against abuse. One solution would be to use redirects or robots txt to keep listings in the free Live Directory from passing any link popularity.

Third Tier: Inktomi Web search results - The Third tab was for spidered search results from Inktomi. They were not the best in the world but they were fairly fresh and unlike the directories, listed pages rather than sites.

So all this is past history, but I wanted to be able to refer back to NBCi in some upcoming posts so I thought I would describe NBCi for those that do not remember it. But I also think that NBCi had some good ideas and a good model for fusing human reviewed listings with search and I do not see any technological reason why the NBCi 3 tier approach could not be copied and brought back today. If done right I think it could be quite nice, although the top level directory would need to be seeded with quality sites and not just allowed to grow full of spam or commerce only sites. If I had the money or the programming skills I would love to give it a try.

Anyone have any thoughts on or memories about either the old Snap directory or NBCi they would like to add?