Ask HN: What strategy would you take to build a search engine today?

#1

Post by matt1 » Fri, Aug 28, 2009, 5:00 PM UTC

If you were to begin working on a search startup from scratch today, what strategy would you take? I'm thinking the best route would be to focus on a specific niche and tailor the search features around that topic since you wouldn't be able to compete on breadth.

What would you do?

Re: Ask HN: What strategy would you take to build a search engine today?

#2

Post by jakestorm » Fri, Aug 28, 2009, 5:13 PM UTC

I would make this engine: http://www.badabingle.com because what else do you need?

Re: Ask HN: What strategy would you take to build a search engine today?

#3

Post by matt1 » Fri, Aug 28, 2009, 5:41 PM UTC

jakestorm wrote: post #2

I would make this engine: http://www.badabingle.com because what else do you need?

That's cheating :)

Re: Ask HN: What strategy would you take to build a search engine today?

#4

Post by jdrock » Fri, Aug 28, 2009, 6:01 PM UTC

Use us. http://www.80legs.com.

:)

Re: Ask HN: What strategy would you take to build a search engine today?

#5

Post by Tichy » Fri, Aug 28, 2009, 6:11 PM UTC

I still like the idea of using p2p computing to get the computing power (Searchi at home?), though I am not sure how viable it is.

Another thing I would be interested in experimenting with is browsing search results. Maybe a flat list of results is not the end of the story? For example maybe it could be interesting to be able to click results and say "more like this, or more like that" (maybe Google does it already with voting on results - did they continue that eperiment?).

I am not sure if Google's Algorithm is even that good (the SEOs still succeed, after all). Computing power might not be an edge forever, either. Where they have a big lead might be the number of data sources they have. Not only crawling the web, but people using Google Groups, Google Maps, the book scanning thing, and so on...

Re: Ask HN: What strategy would you take to build a search engine today?

#6

Post by yannis » Fri, Aug 28, 2009, 6:19 PM UTC

jdrock wrote: post #4

Use us. http://www.80legs.com . :)

Very interesting idea.

Re: Ask HN: What strategy would you take to build a search engine today?

#7

Post by kasunh » Fri, Aug 28, 2009, 6:21 PM UTC

I would opt for a complete new type of a search engine. One with completely different features to present day search engines.

1) A mashup type of a search engine which would combine results from different locations and combine them into one result

2) An intelligent search engine which give one or few accurate answer to what ever we ask from it.

Re: Ask HN: What strategy would you take to build a search engine today?

#8

Post by matt1 » Fri, Aug 28, 2009, 6:23 PM UTC

jdrock wrote: post #4

Use us. http://www.80legs.com . :)

I just read through everything on your site with the exception of the wiki -- pretty amazing stuff you guys are doing. There are so many possibilities... just wow. Nice work.

Re: Ask HN: What strategy would you take to build a search engine today?

#9

Post by yannis » Fri, Aug 28, 2009, 6:25 PM UTC

Search technology - perhaps because of the cost in setting up - has stayed behind. I would like to see:

(01)User ability to adjust the 'algo' for ranking results. I may want all the newer websites and news in my ield rather than the websites with the highest page rank.

(02) Ability to distinguish an 'authority website', i.e I search for Topic X, I do not want the wikipedia. I want the website perhaps of a Ph.D. student with no SEO, but with 500 pages on the topic (i.e not only rank pages, but rank websites).

(03) and fast as hell :)

Re: Ask HN: What strategy would you take to build a search engine today?

#10

Post by jpeterson » Fri, Aug 28, 2009, 6:26 PM UTC

jdrock wrote: post #4

Use us. http://www.80legs.com . :)

Why are comments like this sometimes voted to the top, and other times buried with downvotes? Where's the line between good self-promotion and spam? Seriously asking.