Searchii - New Zealand’s Answer to Google?!!?
October 17th, 2008I was somewhat astounded to watch an interview with the founder of a New Zealand search engine called Searchii, which they believe will compete directly with Google and Microsoft Live.
Bro, I respect your entrepreneurial passion, however, if you are going to invest time, energy and money in a start up business, please, please, please make sure it has a sound chance of success. Whilst I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, here are the challenges you face:
Google has 90% market share
You are trying to compete with what is essentially a monopoly. Google have come into this market and obliterated Yahoo! and Microsoft Live (formerly MSN). These companies have far greater resources than you guys.
Search Engines Are About Scale
As a standalone market, not one of the major players would invest in building a New Zealand only search engine. The reason that Google makes money in NZ, aside from their massive market share, is the fact that they don’t need any infrastructure or operations in this country. They can leverage everything from their US, Sydney, Ireland and other international operating units. Effectively in NZ they have sales. The other aspect of scale is that you must have a critical mass of traffic for me to even consider this as an advertising option for our clients. We don’t even bother with Yahoo! Search Marketing because the numbers are too small to warrant the cost of setting up and running a campaign. Do you think you can easily beat Yahoo!’s market share in a short space of time? If I want to spend $500 per day on an average cost per click of $1.50, for example, can you deliver this much targeted traffic?
Google already has a solution
I’m not saying that niche search has no value, in fact I believe it does, however, so does Google. This is why they have launched Google Custom Search Engine which allows you to apply your own filters to the Google index, for example, to create a NZ only search engine. You can then just plug in to their AdSense advertising revenue model, removing the need for you to worry about building your own ad serving, reporting and sales operation. You can rebrand it and still build your own audience, but without the underlying technology issues.
New Zealand Owned Doesn’t Mean Success
You said in your interview that you believe New Zealander’s will support and get behind your site because it is a New Zealand business. I’m sorry, but that is just not going to happen. All the numbers and research show that New Zealander’s are far from loyal to local brands and companies.
You Think Your Point of Difference is Relevancy?
Are you serious? For this to be a factor, Google would have to be not good at relevancy. They are.
New Zealand Only Search Engines Are Not New
SearchNZ existed before Google. Who? I hear you ask. Exactly. This was at one point the most popular search engine in New Zealand. We’re talking way back in the ’90’s.
You obviously have a capable team, as launching something like this is not an inconsiderable project. However, you need to rethink your plans. If the guys behind Wikipedia are struggling to make their search engine a success, with all the leverage they had, you need to consider what a massive challenge you have taken on.
Am I just being cynical? What do you think of Searchii’s chances?
Categories: Search
I just have one thing to say:
Fail search.
Nivin, out.
Have to agree Jon.
From their tech page: “To search the billions of pages on the web, Searchii also uses meta search technology to grab the most relevant results from other leading search engines.”
So they’re rehashing Google’s results and selling placement around it?
Give the guy a break. Classic Tall “POPPY” syndrome here.
Why not shoot for the stars? Why NOT have audacious goals and try to beat the best.
You don’t start out by saying you want to be half as good as a shitty search engine.
This guy only needs a small percentage of online advertising to be a successful business. Especially in NZ.
Good luck to him.
It isn’t really Tall Poppy syndrome as they are not yet successful. I just think that they are facing serious challenges that don’t seem to have been considered.
They don’t need just a small percentage of New Zealand’s search market share, they need to be substantially more than Yahoo! and Microsoft Live to even justify it as an advertising option.
Having been involved in many, many New Zealand web start ups, building a substantial audience is hard, and takes a long time. This is one of the smallest Internet populations in the world and they have chosen a revenue model that depends entirely on scale.
The other issue that hasn’t been addressed is how they are clearly different and better than the market leader? I’m not saying that you shouldn’t take on Google directly, and there are many companies doing this successfully, such as Zoho. However, if you are going to take them on, you need to be clear what your difference is, and I can’t see it? Copying Google’s business model exactly but then applying it to one of the smallest markets in the world, just doesn’t make sense to me.
TradeMe worked because they had a better product than eBay, and still do. They also had the advantage of minimal competition for many years to enable them to build their critical mass. By the time the dust from the dot com crash settled and eBay was considering New Zealand again, it was too late. Whereas, Searchii are launching at a time, when Google has unprecedented market share and now a strong local presence in New Zealand.
There are so many other ways they could have done this. They are not even vaguely attractive to Google as an acquisition opportunity. Would Google pay them a high multiple for their search algorithm or crawler technology? The valuation would be purely based on traffic, in which case they would have been better to build an audience and just sign up to AdSense. Then, they would be an attractive advertising option for our clients.
I hope they do succeed, nothing makes me more upset than seeing capital and resources wasted in the failure of New Zealand founded technology ventures, as it makes it even harder for the next guy. This post is just my opinion of the challenges they face, that don’t seem to have been considered based on the interview with the founder I saw. Maybe they have answers to all of these.
I would say simply if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I have never had a problem with Google and am quite brand loyal now so it would take a giant leap for me to change
Ben Kepes from Diversity has also posted on this:
http://diversity.net.nz/a-search-engine-now-thats-novel/2008/10/23/