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ABOUT THE SEARCH ENGINE ALLIANCE (SEA)
Our vision statement. By Stephen Hunt.
The SEA is a site and organization that aims to make the internet easier to navigate for the average citizen of the internet.
Rapid growth of the Web has meant that up to new 250,000 URLs a day are now going live on the net. It is probably not an understatement to say that in ten years time there is unlikely to be a company, corporation, business and corner shop that doesn't have its own web site.
This richness and variety of content has led to some unanticipated problems. Searching the web for specific data, or nuggets of information gold, has become a painful, hit and miss affair. Every user's own experience confirms this. Needle and haystack come to mind ... and many an other old cliché.
Add to this the old adage that 'anyone can publish on the internet' , has now translated into the situation that anyone does. Quality is a rare commodity, but not one limited to the big budget 'shovelware' sites funded by the corporates' deep pockets.
Sometimes the good stuff can be found on the three-person band site, unencumbered by the baggage of tradition, history, or approval committees (ironically, the ones who don't get listed due to a lack of advertising budget to 'influence' the search engines).
So who is to sort through this morass? Index things in an intelligent way. The large search engine that suck up everything from Pizza Hut to Picasso?
I think not. One of my defining experiences of generic search engines was three years ago when I was trying to get my -then - employer's site http://www.nature.com registered with the big search engine players.
Nature is the world's leading science magazine. It has published - first - the original papers on Darwin's theory of evolution, the discovery of the DNA helix, right to through to the cloning of Dolly the sheep. Many Nobel prize winners would sell their grannies to get their work published in Nature.
And what did the super-engine reviewers think of www.nature.com? One 'informed' reviewer thought it was too difficult to understand, hadn't heard of it, and recommended a dire pop-science site instead. Now bare in mind that this is a title that is essential 'bookmark' material for any serious scientist.
But why should that search engine reviewer have known what Nature meant to a professional scientist? They hadn't worked in science. They probably had been reviewing a Pamela Anderson site before visiting Nature. And the next site on their list might well have been a computer game review resource, a cancer help site or a French cheese shop.
It suddenly struck me. This reviewer didn't know their subject. And judging by the quality of the listings I have seen since, very few do.
So, informed by this revelation, I ran away in 1997 to set up one of the web's first industry-specific search engines, www.financewise.com (it's still around, have a look - but please don't write to me to get listed there, I've moved on to other things now).
You will probably agree, it is surely much better to use an internet signpost that points to a single subject area in depth - with a design, interface, understanding, focus, insight and zoology structure specific to just that topic. Run by people who know the players, who know the content. Who know what's worthy. Who understand what sucks.
Well, 1999 has rolled around and the age of the vertical portal is being loudly trumpeted by Wired, E-Business and many other notables as the next big thing. I agree. It is the next big thing.
These are the search engines and directories you will find on the SEA site.
Enjoy.
Stephen Hunt
Search Engine Alliance
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