UKwizz new Uk engine

[ukwizz]

Hi there.

First off I woudl like to introduce myself. My name is Alistair McIntyre and I own and operate www.ukwizz.com

It is a fairly new Uk based search engine. The engine is aproximatly 6 months old, so is very much still building it's database. We crawl all our own data, no feeds etc, we also use no adverts, sponsored listings or any other distraction. Just pure search results.

I could sure use your feedback :)

UKWizz.

[anthonycea]

Hey man, how are you? We talked at an un-named forum before, I will not name it because I do not like to promote other forums on Digital Point.

But I hope you are progressing, we are here to help and hope you will help us.

Welcome to Digital Point, maybe you should do an introduction thread on yourself and your background also, look you will get a 2 for the price of 1 deal at DP!!!!

[misohoni]

nice site, how do you get revenue for it?

also the rate it function doesn't work..

[T0PS3O]

And what's its Unique Selling Points?

I appreciate your efforts but why would you even try and compete with Google, Yahoo, MSN and many others? Your technology doesn't seem cutting edge. I tried a few terms and got some medicore to poor results to be honest. And if you aren't going to make a penny of it.... What's the point?

It does look very good design-wise. It seems to work functionality-wise and it's pretty fast so well done for all that. But unless you explain your motivations and goals a bit more, i really can not see the point.

[anthonycea]

It is just a start up TOPS, he is a UK only SE, he is doing his own spidering and that may be why you have not found a lot of results on your terms since it is a UK ONLY engine.

He will be able to add advertising and affiliate programs to the engine when traffic is built.

[SEbasic]

Have you thought of partnering with Mirago to try and provide some more results to the site?
You'd also get paid if the sites are clicked on (Overture style).

[T0PS3O]

AC,

Then why would people use this instead of ticking the 'UK Only' box on Google?

Will anything be developed to even get near Google and other's relevancy of results for queries processed? At the moment it seems like it lists all pages with the term on it, in no apparent order.

Just trying to be critical and give some feedback.

The product is very nice but the service is overshadowed by others. You have to be first, or different. Definitely not first and only different in negative ways at the moment. Alistair did a great job in making the spider, the index and the functionality but I just don't see how this is going to work out if it doesn't have any added value over others.

[anthonycea]

That is why he is here to get your input, I am not trying to discourage it, but to give you additional insight into what he is doing.

[T0PS3O]

I'll wait to hear from him then. Thanks for the heads-up.

[Solicitors Mortgages]

Welcome Alistair McIntyre.

Good luck with your venture.
It looks very promising.
GEM

[T0PS3O]

[off-topic]...still gemstone ads I see :([/off-topic]

[Solicitors Mortgages]

[reply to off-topic]
absolutely..its getting on my nerves
I got some people to klik on a few towns (all the catagories)...to see if adsense would trigger a re-read, and it hasn't yet. That was about 3 days ago. Is annoying as the CTR would be greatly increased if the ads were at least 'on topic'.

More recent news ( if you can help)..48hrs ago I put a 500+ link sitemap on the home page to help google along (scroll down on Home page)...google has re-cached that page already,which is great, but still didn't seem to crawl any deeper..it goes from one headache to another.

[ukwizz]

wow thanks for the replies guys,

A few of you have asked about how it makes money, it doesnt, that wasn't my intention from the start. To be honest I don't intend to make any money directly from users.

The database is still very small when compared to the larger search engines, like was said, who can possible compete with the likes of Google. The overall aim is to run it like a nich search engine, admitadly the UK is a very large niche but the princaples are still the same.

This is where is is currently hosted from http://www.ukwizz.com/servers.jpg :)

UKWizz.

[expat]

Hi and welcome.

Nice design
Q1 as you do / intend to crawl how will or do you handle subdomains?

M

PS you also may want to put in a visual submit control - otherwise you may be s^^^ed

[ukwizz]

Hi expat.

Sub domains are handled in the saw way regular domains are. In effect they are classed as their own site.

UKWizz

[expat]

Hi expat.

Sub domains are handled in the saw way regular domains are. In effect they are classed as their own site.

UKWizz
Great -I think that is how they should be used not as extensions to existing sites only if this is indicated via links.
M

[tony84]

your directory doesnt have a category for music sites i tried adding mine, i did add my domain to the search engine though
nice site

[mopacfan]

I added my url for our UK domain to be spidered. I did not add anything to the directory since the links are redirects. If the links were true anchor text links, I would have been glad to get listed in the directory.

Good luck, it looks clean and simple.

[ukwizz]

Yep the directory links to go through a cgi app to count clicks etc. To be honest though, the directory is just somewhere people can browse for sites of interest. The only main benefit of direct links is PR. Thats not what it's about. :)

UKWizz

[expat]

Yep the directory links to go through a cgi app to count clicks etc. To be honest though, the directory is just somewhere people can browse for sites of interest. The only main benefit of direct links is PR. Thats not what it's about. :)

UKWizz
To expect siteowners to find a matching cat submit by hand and than not even give a straight link in exchange in my book is cheating on the non technicals as anyone knowing about these issues will not submit.

Thus a directory based on such old technology in my opinion is doomed or simply serves a site a linkfarm and thus should be avoided like hell.

It will also do more or less nothing to support any case behind it as SE's are waking up (and I hope kill all these) to the fact that collection directories are pretty useless in terms of straight SE results where the user is actually looking to find a real site not a maze of link farm equivalents.

M

[ukwizz]

Well if a site owner takes the time to find a suitable category and adds their site then i an very grateful but why shoudl they insist on a direct link?

The directory is nothing more than a directory. Outside factors are outside factors, nothing more.

You make it sound as if I owe the site submiters something for adding their sites? it doesnt benefit me one way or the other. We are just thinking about this from different points of view.

I accept that to an extent people who are hunting down links are to a large extent looking towards the larger picture. pagerank link count ect. What you have to remember is the directory os part of UKWizz not a pr tool ect.

You also mentioned the term linkfarm. Not quite sure where you get this from. but a link farm generaly is there to benefit the domain behind it.. explain to me again how i benefit from it in any way?

What I offer is a free directory listing, nothing else. I dont require payment, recip link or anything else. Most accept it as such.


HI tony84
You where asking about a music category...
http://dir.ukwizz.com/Arts_And_Music/Music/

:)

UKWizz.

[vincentg]

There is no difference between a link based on an ID or Direct if the website has a text display of the URL on the page.

Having hundreds of links showing up in google for click4choice.com is more than enough proof of this!

First you enjoy a category listing such as Modern Technology!
http://www.google.com/search?q=modern+technology&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&start=20&sa=N

Second you get a link listing
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=cw3host&btnG=Search

So get you facts straight before you knock the way a directory works

Vincent Click4choice.com

[T0PS3O]

There is no difference between a link based on an ID or Direct if the website has a text display of the URL on the page.

Nonsense.

Show me that proof if you can please. It will be interesting to see.

[vincentg]

From AWStats November:

Links from an Internet Search Engine - Full list
- Google 5114

The number is rising to over 6,000 this month and I expect it to go even higher still in coming months.

This number would have been even higher but since I redesigned the website totally a short time ago 70% of the SE links were shot to, well you know where.

The links are steadily increasing and google bot is a full time guest as are others in my directory.

First let me point out what is important!
The main reason to be in a directory is for traffic - not PR!
PR is highly over rated and even Google is claiming it is for entertainment purposes and not to be taken as a serious factor.

Now as for traffic - there are many directories out there and most of them will provide no traffic.

DMOZ is a perfect example - great PR and zero traffic.

The Web is filled with experts that claim to know the answers and those that follow waste time and money.

Traffic is king and it takes hard work to get it and listing in the right places.
What is a right place - answer is simple - a place that sends hits and not promises of a higher PR that does absolutely nothing for your website what so ever.

Unless you are in the scam game of selling websites for inflated prices because you have such a great PR rating in Google.

Vin

[T0PS3O]

Looking at traffic, no, there is no difference. But I don't want a redirect either. Just like you say, most directories give you F all traffic. So the only incentive is a good anchor text relevant link. That link plus many others help in ranking well (if they aren't a dodgy redirect). And SE rankings happen to bring in over 90% of our visitors so that is why it DOES make a difference. And to traffic as well. But not direct traffic from that directory.

[vincentg]

OK

Back to direct link.
The cw3host example has no direct link yet it's there!
There are many others also.

One of the things that helps is a detail page - one page dedicated to the single website.

I think the Thumbshots also are helpful since they do have an internal link but I can't say for sure that it does.

Now each link has two or more chances of being picked up.
But there is no guarantee a site will be picked up no matter what - direct link or not.

I find that sites listed in the top ten have a better chance of being picked up on a directory list.

The SE's have a system and if a site is listed in a directory it has a good chance verses a link farm.
Of course links from other related websites are always best.

What you fail to see is the link works both ways.
A link for xyz site is not only a link to xyz site but also to the place where the link is.

Now for google to send over 5,000 unique visitors to click4choice there must be a heck of a lot of links out there since click4choice does not rank well for high traffic keywords such as "Directory" or "Web directory".
No we look at categories - can't be all that traffic is due to every category in click4choice being listed - I don't have that many categories.

Not one search query gets more than 50 hits as a norm with many getting around 10 on average.

You only have to do the math to see that sites are listed as linking to the directory which has no direct links.

Vin

[T0PS3O]

I don't quite follow you...

When stating examples it would be handy to have full URLs. Just saying " The cw3host example" doesn't show me anything because I can't find it. When you display a G search URL, tell me which ranks to look at and which ones have no direct links.

And when you mention sending traffic.. Do you mean directory to site in directory? Or google to directory or google to site in directory?

I'm lost...

[vincentg]

when you have a link listed in a SE such as yahoo or google that link is a two way link. Both benift from it!!!

I wouldn't put a high priority on direct links - it's not important and again the math on the numbers shows it in my case and I do believe other good directories which track click through activity also will have similar results.

Yahoo does not have direct links - are you suggesting they are a bad directory and Search Engine due to this?

But getting back to the main topic which is UKwizz - Alistiar has done a fine job so far.

UK Wizz has shown good results and his promotion has also been fantastic.
UKWizz has only been in operation for a short time and it's already doing very well as far as traffic goes.
And for those that believe in PR it has already at PR 5.

The effort that goes behind the project is unfortunately never seen.
I commend him for a under taking that has merit and the choice of technology used to bring UKWizz to life.

Vin

[vincentg]

This is my last post on either subject.

I have told Alistiar that I will use a search feed for my UK Website.

So by next week hopefully Click4Choice UK will have results by UKWizz.

I rather see a unique Feed such as that Alistair has put together rather then some bottled Feed that people can get anywhere.

The current search used right now was an experiment using Google which will be replaced.

Now I just did a random search in Google from results from my US directory.

These are the results:
--------------------------------
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=copyright+witness&btnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=copyrightwitness&btnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=djmandy
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=free-people-search-online
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=gkindia
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=jarrellaudio
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=jarrell+audio+concepts&btnG=Search

As we can clearly see both the Title and URL shows up.
For those that are still non-believers you are welcome to pick any link you want and search it the same way.

Another point which is interesting is "jarrell audio concepts" which ranks better in the listing than for his own website!

This proves that direct link theory is nothing more than utter nonsense.

Vin