Summary
Become.com is a new search engine still in development that distinguishes between shopping and searching for information. Studies indicate that 75 percent of all consumers research online before buying offline, which has caused a great deal of ambiguity for search engines. The engines did not know whether a reader was looking for information about her search topic, or was looking to buy. Become.com solves that by asking the user to provide some information before searching.
Original source:
http://www.clickz.com/experts/brand/buzz/article.php/3489186
Details
After four days of all search, all the time at Search Engine Strategies (SES) last week, I thought I was up to speed with search's bleeding edge.
Until my meeting this week with the newest entrant in the shopping search fray: Become.com.
Cofounders Michael Yang and Yeogirl Yun, the team that built comparison-shopping site mySimon (which they sold for $700 million), dropped in for a chat.
A BIGresearch study went further still, finding close to 75 percent of all consumers research online before buying offline.
As Yang put it, "There's no context of user interest."
As search becomes the fastest-growing sector of the burgeoning interactive marketing industry, spawning billions of dollars' worth of new advertising and business models, there's been no good way of knowing if a term such as "digital camera" means the searcher is researching a purchase, looking to buy a camera, or chasing down information about using a camera he already owns.
On Google, Yahoo!, and their ilk, page rank hinges on inbound link popularity.
The Consumer Reports Web site just isn't linked much, but it is chock-full of buying advice.
Yun, cofounder and CTO, explained Become's algorithm considers outbound as well as inbound links in ranking results and penalizes sites with in- or outbound links to off-topic content or spam.
The company plans to add feeds midyear, shooting for 2,000 affiliate and merchant/vendor feeds by year end.
Shopping.com, in comparison, has just over 3,500 feeds.
Here's the part where you marketers out there feel like kids staring yearningly into a candy store.
Despite Become's unprecedented segmentation of searchers known to be
shopping into research and shop modes, Yang told me the company has no plans to sell ads.
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and award-winning journalist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, and he has published numerous courses on preparedness and survival, including financial preparedness, emergency food supplies, urban survival and tactical self-defense. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. In mid 2010, Adams produced TV.NaturalNews.com, a natural health video sharing website offering user-generated videos on nutrition, green living, fitness and more. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also the CEO of a highly successful email newsletter software company that develops software used to send permission email campaigns to subscribers. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and pursues hobbies such as martial arts, Capoeira, nature macrophotography and organic gardening. Known by his callsign, the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org
Have comments on this article? Post them here:
people have commented on this article.
Monday, March 21, 2005
Email this article to a friend
Share
this article on: 
