Latest Dilbert . . .

eeks.. .

Wanted to thank Christoph of PageFlakes for being the first guinea pig, I mean beta partner, for Gravee’s API efforts :) Part of our vision had always been allowing our community to use Gravee where ever they happen to be. As such our partnership with PageFlake was a natural fit.

You can find us at the PageFlake Gallery.

Stay tuned as Gravee and Pageflakes has even more up our collective sleeves (4 to be exact between me and Christoph).

Couple days ago Gravee was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. . . (here)

The funny part is that we were literally . . . mentioned. . . as in

4) From where, precisely, did you get that dorky company name? (OK, that last question I made up, but only because the current group of casually hip monikers for Web businesses — Zoho, Simpy, Skobee, Gravee and Goowy are all real companies — all sound like something you’d hear on a grade-school playground during recess.)

We had always wished WSJ would mention us especially since we believe we have an unique value proposition and positioning in the search industry (not mentioning an incredibly fast growing community) . . . BUT since we have a PR budget of absolute 0, any press is good press :) even if WSJ is just making fun of us. So for now, atleast we know the couple of hundred bucks we spent to buy the URL was worth the investment cause it made WSJ talk about us :)

We spent the last week moving our servers from a “well known” hosting company to a less “well-known” one. . . Why? Regrettably, the “well known” company was not performing to our expectations and throttling our bandwidth without telling us. . . With our traffic growing quickly, we got to the point that performance of the site was not acceptable. So, unfortunately, instead of focusing on building out more new features and functionality (which we are refocusing on now :-), we got ourselves 3X the bandwidth and 3X the # of CPU’s to make Gravee faster to use. . . So let us know if you feel the difference! And, thanks for your patience.

Thanks for a couple of Gravee community member who brought it to my attention. . . apparently we were mentioned on NPR last night or is it this morning? I have no idea what they said so if someone know where I can dig up a transcript, let me know, I would love to share it with everyone. . . !

It’s been several weeks since we launched the first beta version of Gravee to an incredible response of support (and controversy!). In the meantime, we haven’t said too much about our future plans for the company. Well, there’s actually a good reason (we promise we haven’t just been lazy!).

On Tuesday, February 7th, we are officially launching Gravee at the DEMO ‘06 conference in Phoenix, AZ. Out of 1,500 companies that applied to launch their new products or services at the DEMO, we were lucky enough to be one of the 70 that were selected to present. We are honored, and to be honest, truly shocked that anyone actually cared! :-) (Chris Shipley actually dubbed us one of three “Disruptor” companies at the event!)

During our radio silence, we have been working diligently to realize the vision we set out for Gravee in the first place. While the Adshare program generated an incredible amount of buzz in a relatively short period of time, it was just one component of a broader vision. Much more than just a rebate scheme, it was our first step toward engaging the community of content owners in an honest and straight forward dialogue about how Gravee can better serve them with a fair, equitable and transparent model for content distribution on the Web.

Search engines have become the de facto content distribution channel for the Internet. Yet, unlike any other distribution industry (offline or online), many search engines don’t view their suppliers (content owners) as true partners, nor do they view their searchers (content consumers) as customers. Instead, this arms length relationship between many search engines and their communities has created angst for content owners on how to best reach their consumers, and how consumers can best provide feedback back to the original creators of that content. This disconnect between content producers and end users prevents the creation of a virtuous cycle of feedback between consumers and content creators, which prevents all of us from creating and enjoying better and more valuable content.

At DEMO, we are unveiling our mission statement for the company:

- To treat content creators as true partners in the distribution process
- To treat content consumers and search users as customers
- To create an equitable and transparent distribution channel for content owners
- To create a more responsive and transparent feedback mechanism for content creators and consumers
- To enable a “virtuous cycle” of content creation and consumption on the Web that connects content owners more directly to their consumers

To do so, we are also turning our attention to the other half of the community – the end users of search engines (or, really, the consumers of content). We believe search users are ready to become more than just static consumers of content, they are willing and able to actively help discover, evaluate, and filter content for the entire Internet community.

Together, we can not only create a better search engine with more relevant results, but foster a healthier relationship between the broader community of Web site owners, content publishers, and consumers.

Below is a list of new features we have been working on over the past several weeks:

- A better looking site (our # 1 complaint :-)
- Blog search
- Search and bookmarking features for the Firefox toolbar
- Claiming sub-directories or sub-domains of a Web sites, not
just the entire site (for all you bloggers out there :-)
- Social bookmarking and tagging
- Relevance voting on individual search results
- Ability to tag, vote and bookmark directly from search results
- TagRank, our relevance-based search ranking algorithm that takes into consideration multiple search algorithms and all user inputs (including bookmarks, tags, relevance votes, and that particular user’s history)

We are still far, far away from achieving our vision. So we would like thank everyone for all of your feedback, encouragement, and patience. Please keep it coming! We are committed to building out our vision for content distribution on the Web in partnership together with you – our community, but we need your partnership and guidance along the way.

PS – Look out for a video version of our DEMO presentation in the next couple of weeks!

So another round of debate over the value of search engines for content/website owners was kicked off today. But this time it’s not bunch of nobodies (e.g. us here at Gravee) arguing back and forth, but between Jakob Nielsen (yes! THE Jakob Nielsen) and Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch.

Jakob argues that . . .

Search engines extract too much of the Web’s value, leaving too little for the websites that actually create the content. Liberation from search dependency is a strategic imperative for both websites and software vendors.

There’s no doubt that search engines provide a valuable service to users. The issue here is what search engines do to the companies they feed on — the companies that fund the creation of original information. Search engines mainly build their business on other websites’ content. The traditional analysis has been that search engines amply return the favor by directing traffic to these sites. While there’s still some truth to that, the scenario is changing.

Paid search confiscates too much of a website’s value.

Essentially, because ad prices on search engine are auction-based, “winning bidders” will end up paying one cent more than the margin contribution of the next best set of “losing bidders.” Companies who do not have the best of the best margin structures (cost of goods + overheads) will ALWAYS end up paying ALL of their profits to search engines in order to get placement on search engines. There is actually nothing fundamentally wrong about this (in theory), it’s called capitalism & efficient markets.

Danny argues back

As I commented on his blog, it’s fair to say that despite grumbles, that the vast majority of site owners do not consider search engines leeches. If they did, they would delete themselves by blocking spiders. It’s not hard to do. A simple change to the robots.txt file will block all the major search spiders. But no on does this, because they want the traffic. Even Jakob’s own file isn’t blocking Google and gang.

But back to Jakob’s point, it turns out he really isn’t talking about the “source material” being leeched but instead about the high cost of advertising. Again to his opening statement, with the key part in bold.

“I worry that search engines are sucking out too much of the Web’s value, acting as leeches on companies that create the very source materials the search engines index.”

And the evidence of this?

“Paid search confiscates too much of a website’s value.”

What? Paid search “confiscates” a site’s value? Since when did search engines suddenly show up at a web site and demand the owner sign-up for advertising? We’ve long had rumors that a site that doesn’t advertise might find themselves banned with various major search engines. We’ve even had reports of “monetization targeting” where site owners have found that doing an ad or paid inclusion buy might clear up a spam banning problem. But by and large, there are plenty of web sites that spend nil with search engines on advertising and get plenty of traffic.

We here at Gravee obviously side more with Jakob, but we also think Danny has a point . . . well a little of a point. The issue here is not whether search engines add value to content owners - they do. . . they are great distribution channel for content (i.e. source of traffic).

The harder question is whether the usual suspect of search engines (you know who) have aggregated so much market share that they are able to exert oligopolistic power over content publishers and website owners. Because they own so much of the search query market, they are able to increasingly display more and more paid search advertising to siphon off traffic away from natural search results without websites switching to a competing vendor (because there are no alternatives!), thus forcing content owners to pay for more and more advertising to maintain the same amount of traffic.

Do the current search engines have so much power that natural search inclusion is NOT enough to build a sustainable business despite the best content and the best management practices? In such a case, market efficiency theory breaks down, because the lack of alternatives causes ad prices to rise above and beyond fair market value (think Microsoft).

Put it in simpler terms, for all the small guys out there the . . . can you afford NOT to pay for ads on a search engine to survive? I suspect we all know the answer to that one.

See more discussion/debate/hate on this issue in the follow blogs

Searchblog - Neutral
Search Engine Herald - Neutral
Jason Calacanis - Danny
Life in Cloudspace - Jakob
Christian Sarkar - Jakob
K2 Ramblings - Danny
Vaspers - Jakob
Philipp Lenssen - Neutral (Forum)
Heather Green of Biz Week - Jakob
Small Initiatives - Neutral
Threadwatch- Mixed

Thanks everyone for your great feedback. We have been pleasantly overwhelmed with the response (even the mean ones ;-).

It seems there’s some speculation about the spam implications of sharing ad revenue with content owners that appear in natural search results… We’ve thought long and hard about the issue of spam in search results, and actually believe we can be part of the solution, rather than exacerbating the problem.

When we first began this project, we made it part of our mission to enable legitimate content owners to profit from their creation and efforts. To that end, we believe that those with the best and most relevant content should profit more than those with less popular or relevant content. In other words, the market decides what is most relevant (measured, in part, by how often it surfaces in search results). As a result, it’s critical for us to surface the most relevant results first, and less relevant results later, to deliver on our mission. (Ideally, our goal is to have spam never surface at all!)

But, spam is a universal challenge for all search engines. And for Gravee, it poses an even more critical problem, because results that are overrun with spam mean that spammers are taking money from the truly original and relevant content that should be surfaced and compensated. However, this isn’t a new problem – it’s already happening today on search engines. Spammers are driving traffic away from legitimate sites because, in the end, traffic = money for the spammer.

So, that brings us to the $64,000 question: Will Gravee’s business model actually exacerbate the spamming problem? In our estimation, the answer is “no” for a host of reasons. Here are a few…

1) Gaming Gravee’s search results is actually harder than gaming an individual search engine. Gravee’s relevancy algorithm takes into consideration the rank of each result in four different search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Gravee). In order to surface higher in our search results, each website will have to be considered relevant first by four different algorithms. As a result (unless spammers have figured out how to game ALL FOUR separate algorithms, which is mathematically less probable), Gravee, by definition, will have less spam than a single algorithm-based search engine. That means spammers would be less likely to earn revenue from Gravee even in the event they were to register in the AdShare program.

2) Part of what makes search results spamming economically profitable today are advertising programs like AdSense. Without them, spammers wouldn’t be able to monetize the natural search traffic they redirect from legitimate, relevant content to their spam content (which they then monetize with ads). But, does this mean AdSense and programs like it are bad? Of course not! There are legitimate and illegitimate uses of programs like AdSense. In fact, programs like AdSense are a godsend for many small (and large) companies that would not otherwise be able to build thriving businesses without it. Generally, we believe the same holds true with Gravee. Sure, some people might try to game the system. And, like with AdSense, some may succeed. But, in the meantime, we will be working hard to manage spam issues just like any other search engine. And with the inherent advantage of four algorithms to beat rather than just one, we may even have a bit of a head start on the spammers. ;-)

3) Spamming is one of the major blind spots of algorithmic search engines – including ours. That’s why in the coming weeks, we’ll be releasing several new community-driven relevancy features that will enable our community to help police spamming, and contribute to determining relevancy in our results. We believe that with machines + people, we can make a dent in the problem.

As always, feedback is welcome!

Ok, so we debated for about half an hour last night over whether we should do one of those “send us your email and we’ll get back to you in 2 weeks and if we like you we’ll let you invite your friends later” kind of betas to generate buzz and a sense of secrecy/scarcity (it’s the new stealth!) OR just open up Gravee to the world and let EVERYONE beat on it mercilessly. Obviously the latter won out because we decided we wouldn’t be able to take ourselves that seriously. (and to be honest, we are not reformulating the new coke here at Gravee . . . at least not yet)

We sent out a few e-mails to a some of our favorite bloggers hoping to recruit people to play with the system and help figure out all the stupid mistakes we made when building the site. We had no idea that it would snowball into this incredible groundswell of support (& hate! :-). Either way, we love all the e-mails we got, which helped us think through some of the problems with a neutral, non-biased, and critical eye.

Even more important are people who sent us the bugs they found on the site. Anyways. . . here are our top 5 stupidest things we broke (and fixed!).

5. Forcing people to enter too much information at registration and thus shutting out our international users

4. No reload link on captcha

3. Spelling error (on the sign in button nonetheless! :-)

2. E-mail server that sent out gibberish confirmation e-mails

1. Ultimate captcha stupidity – see Brian Shih’s blog

Thanks for your patience. And please keep the feedback coming!

-William

There’s been some talk lately about MSN Search potentially paying consumers to use their search engine — and whether or not it’s a good idea.

We’re glad that the market is beginning to embrace the notion of challenging the status quo of the existing search business model. We happen to think sharing ad revenue is generally a good idea, and have actually been doing some thinking about the topic ourselves (and some coding :-). But, in our humble opinion, if anyone deserves a share of ad revenue, it’s the content owners (who, let’s face it, make search advertising possible in the first place by allowing search engines to index their content), as well as the sites that drive traffic to our search engine. (We like consumers, too, but they already get to use the search engine for free!)

Search advertising is an $8+ billion industry, which is effectively built on the backs of the content owners. The Gravee.com AdShare program fundamentally changes the economic model for search. Instead of just our search engine enjoying all the profit from advertising (which, incidentally, is made possible by the existence of natural search results in the first place), Gravee.com shares keyword advertising revenue with 1) natural search results that appeared on the same page and 2) affiliates who drive any search traffic that is monetized.

But this is more than just a fundamental change to the search business model. It’s about changing online content distribution. We view ourselves as much as a distributor of content as we do a search engine. Search advertising is content driven. It’s an economy of attention – i.e. one could posit that the content showing up most frequently in search results is driving the most ad revenue. As a result, our economic model is so, as well – meaning, whatever content gets more attention (i.e. shows up in more searches) will get paid more.

Gravee is also about shifting the power from content “distributors” (read: search engines) to “authors” (read: content owners). (Thanks is due here to John Battelle’s thoughts and writings, among others, for helping us to crystallize and articulate this.) In some sense, it’s philosophically not unlike the way eBay sought to empower individuals in its community. Pierre’s vision for eBay had alot to do with leveling the playing field and empowering the little guy (in the case of eBay, to trade and interact). Gravee aspires to do a bit of the same by equitably sharing the value created by search advertising (i.e. content distribution) — leveling the paying field, so to speak — and empowering the little guy in search (i.e. content owners appearing in natural search results). For example, if a blogger generates volumes of great content that surfaces frequently in natural search results (and, as a result, drives lots of ad clicks and revenue), why shouldn’t he share in the value that’s created? We believe that owners of compelling content — which is the underlying asset being monetized by search advertising — should share in the economic value created by the advertising that’s tied to it (or, competing with it, as the case may be). That’s the Gravee AdShare program.

So, please stay tuned… There’s more to Gravee that we’re looking forward to telling you about over the next few of weeks. In the meantime, please check out our beta site, gravee.com. And, after you do, please let us know what you think. Gravee is just getting started, and there’s still lots to do. So please feel free to post your feedback here, or drop us a line at: feedback at gravee dot com. We would certainly appreciate your thoughts, and are looking forward to hearing from you!