To be honest, I hadn’t given Blekko much thought since its launch last October. For all the good intentions to try new and different kind of services, it didn’t take long before I went back to using Google. One of the truths is I didn’t give Blekko much of a chance to unseat Google. Before long, Google had become top-of-mind again, while Blekko blurred into the startup background.

For many startups, this scenario is a harsh reality. While consumers like variety and the idea of shiny new things coming at them on a regular basis, there seems to be a limited ability to truly embrace new services. I suspect most users have a small group of services that meets most of their needs, and that it’s rare that a new service can join the club.

For a new service to resonate, it needs to do the following:

1. Have a powerful, yet, simple value proposition. It needs to fill a need or a perceived need in such a way that a potential users says “Yes, I need that”. Freshbooks is a good example by making invoicing easy.

2. The new service and the value it delivers has to be crystal clear and blatantly obvious. Most consumers are lazy; if they don’t understand a service right away, they’ll move on even if the service is something that meets an obvious need.

3. The process from registering, using and paying (if it’s a premium service) has to be user-friendly and grit-free. If, at any point, you force the consumer to do something that’s difficult or they’re reluctant to do (e.g. provide lots of personal information), they’ll back off. A good example of a grit-free process of NoteLeaf.com’s signup process, which is simple, clean and fast.

4. There should be regular communications (perhaps monthly) with the user that is friendly, helpful but not a hard sell. Let’s face it, people are busy so a friendly reminder from a service can often be enough to catch someone’s attention. This is particularly relevant if the service has a strong value proposition.

5. Encourage other people to spread the word by making it easy and/or giving them incentives. A great example is DropBox, which rewards its users with 500MB of storage if you share a file with someone, and then open a DropBox account.

While I haven’t had much of a chance to put Blekko through its paces, here’s hoping it is able to survive its debut to live another day. In other words, it would be good to see Blekko be given the benefit of the doubt rather than be hit with the criticism that cut off search start-ups such as Cuil and Wolfram at the knees.

Even before Google emerged as the industry Goliath, search has been a competitive and nasty business. Pre-Google, being king of search was a short-lived experienced. One day, it was Lycos, the next day, it’s Excite.

And since Google, the biggest challenge facing search start-ups is that the acid-test has been benchmarking its performance against Google. Wolfram, for example, which set itself up as a research tool, was savaged by critics because it paled in comparison with Google.

Another problem has been many search start-ups have suffered from a bad case of hubris and over-hype. Cuil boasted about the billions of pageviews it had indexed, while Wolfram did little to dismiss the buzz it was the next Google. This is the kind of material that critics love to chew on because it provides a story with drama.

My first impressions of Blekko are that it provides good search results, although the real value of Blekko may be the ability to make vertical searches from an original search query. I haven’t had time to fully explore this feature but it appears to be a smart way to differentiate itself from Google.

I was also impressed by how Blekko quickly responded to a comment that I made on Twitter this morning after I read a New York Times story about its debut. If you are a new search engine looking to win over consumers and technology watchers, being engaged on Twitter is a very smart idea.

Like many people, I did a query for my name. At first, I was surprised to see I ranked second, while Google ranks me first. According to Blekko, Mark Evans Art is the king of “Mark Evans” because it was recently bought by Boing Boing, which is sending a lot of traffic its way.

For more thoughts on Blekko, check out the following
- Danny Sullivan – “Blekko the “Slashtag” Search Engine Goes Live.
- Rafe Needleman: “Blekko Launches the Biased Search Engine”

But in the past two years, Technorati has dusted itself off, admitted its mistakes, and been diligently working to restore its luster. Not that Technorati has come all the way back but there are definite signs of life.

Perhaps the most obvious indication was a new design unveiled yesterday that includes some new wrinkles. (See TechCrunch for coverage of the New Technorati.) It was also disclosed that Technorati has raised another $2-million from its existing investors.

Behind the scenes, CEO Richard Jalichandra, who will deliver a keynote at BlogWorld Expolater this week, has been busy, launching an ad network and bought a blog network, Blogcritics.

The blog search engine is still alive and if Technorati can perform well, it has a shot at reclaiming its status as the blog search leader given the market is still leaderless. Technorati is a good example of a high-flyer that could have easily crashed, burned and disappeared. Instead, it clung to life, reinvented itself, and has lived to see another day.

The latest is the launch of results that show Twitter updates….as long as you’re famous. Dipping its toe into the real-time search market, Bing now presents Twitter updates from “prominent and prolific Twitterers”.

“We’re not indexing all of Twitter at this time… just a small set of prominent and prolific Twitterers to start. We picked a few thousand people to start, based primarily on their follower count and volume of tweets. We think this is an interesting first step toward using Twitter’s public API to surface Tweets in people search. We’d love to hear your feedback as we think through future possibilities in real time search.”

Not surprisingly, the inclusion of Twitter results has received enthusiastically received by many high-profile bloggers – many of whom fall into the “prominent and prolific” category.

It’s another example of how Microsoft is making some smart moves to give Bing a fighting chance. While Bing has some interesting wrinkles, Microsoft has realized that going head-to-head with Google is not a game it’s going to win, so it’s taking another tactic based on coming across as fuser-friendly and a willing to be creative.

So far, it looks like a smart strategy based on Bing’s market share gains recently.

Over the past couple of weeks, Microsoft’s Bing has captured a lot of attention but it’s just one of many new search engines that have appeared on the scene. Some are trying to go head to head with Google, some are focused on Twitter, and some have adopted a hybrid approach by focusing on real-time search.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the new players:

- Bing: Much to a lot of peoples’ surprise, Bing has resonated with users by offering a solid search experience and some interesting features such as related searches. The jury is still out whether Bing will help Microsoft establish a more solid search foothold but the fact it is receiving an enthusiastic welcome is a good sign.

- Topsy: A search engine that bases its results on Twitter ReTweets. It received critical acclaim from TechCrunch.

- CrowdEye: An interesting real-time search engine started by Ken Moss, who led the search engineering team at Microsoft. CrowdEye results feature links to popular stories, as well as the latest Twitter updates. Here’s a Webware review.

- OneRiot: Another player in the real-time search market, OneRiot based its results on the links people share on Twitter, Digg and other social sharing services so it can provide fresh content. OneRiot is definitely worth checking out – the service works quickly and the results are solid and relevant. It’s not a replacement to Google but a good complement.

- Wolfram: Lots of hype and excitement but Wolfram, to date, has been disappointing. After attracting a lot of blog coverage, Wolfram fell flat, mostly because it did a bad job of positioning itself, and failing to control the suggestion it was a Google-killer.

- Collecta: A real-time search engine, Collecta falls into the dreaded trap of over-hyping its service rather than letting happy users spread the world. Here’s its promo pitch on the home page: “Collecta is not like other search engines. The web is alive with real-time information. So why search a stale archive? Collecta monitors the update streams of news sites, popular blogs and social media, and Flickr, so we can show you results as they happen. Give it a try.”

My experiences with Collecta have been disappointing. For example, a search for Steve Jobs took several minutes to generate a result.

For more the search engine landscape, check out VentureBeat, which look at nine new real-time search engines.

Technorati Tags: bing, google, search engines

It was an interesting opportunity for me to hear first-hand about Microsoft’s search ambitions and, as important, listen to what other people within Toronto’s high-tech community are thinking about Bing.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft folks are enthusiastic and bubbly about Bing’s reception. After all, Bing wasn’t savaged unlike search newbies such as Cuil and Wolfram|Alpha.

The people who don’t work for Microsoft were somewhat less buoyant. The general feel is Bing is “fine” – a description we would use when I was kid after piano lessons, which meant we didn’t hate the lesson but weren’t overjoyed either.

By fine, I mean Bing works well enough. It has a few interesting wrinkles and thankfully doesn’t try to position itself as better than Google. The question is whether Bing is different enough to convince people to give it a shot and, ideally, switch from Google.

Right now, I’d say that isn’t going to happen in a significant way but Bing has got off to a un-rocky enough start to live another day.

A friend, whose opinion I trust and value, made it abundantly clear to Ms. Bow that Bing’s biggest weakness could be an abundance of unnecessary frills forced into the mix by ambitious product managers and developers. My friend believes Bing would do itself a lot of good by trying to less to more people, which has a lot of merit.

That said, I think there’s a lot of people rooting for Bing to succeed. There’s people who want Microsoft to become a better search player, and there’s people who want someone – anyone – to really take on Google. In that sense, it’s interesting to see Microsoft as the underdog.

All in all, Bing has potential. The ball’s in Microsoft’s court to see if it can make Bing sing (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!)

Update: All Things D reports that Mahalo, the human-powered search engine whose growth has stalled at about three million unique (U.S.) visitors/month, is going through a two-part makeover. First, the look and feel of front page will change; second, it wants users to flesh out the database as opposed to relying on Mahalo editors.

Addendum: There was not Wi-Fi at the restaurant where Microsoft held the event so I had to take analog notes (aka pen and napkin):

Technorati Tags: bing, google, microsoft, search engines

It was apparently going be launched last Thursday before Google pulled the rug out from Microsoft by unveiling Wave. Then, Bing was going to be launched on June 3. But, today, Bing is live.

First impressions are that Bing has some interesting features that could make it an interesting proposition. I don’t think anyone is going to blown away enough to declare Bing a Google-killer but Bing shows enough potential that you’ll probably give it the benefit of the doubt.

Bing shows particularly intriguing potential when it comes to product searches by providing a variety of options. For example, a search for digital cameras provides links to the top-10 cameras, types of cameras, accessaries, brands and images.

Another really nice feature is the ability to get a snapshot of a blog’s content through a new mini-window that pops up when hover over it. Here’s what you would see if you did a search on “Mark Evans”, and then hovered over the link for my blog.

More: Mike Arrington gives Bing the thumb’s up – “I like it. And I would consider using it as my search engine”, while FastCompany’s Kit Eaton was also impressed. It’s been a long time since a Microsoft product received this kind of reception.

Technorati Tags: bing, google, microsoft

All in all, it’s been disappointing. The chart below – sourced from Compete.com – show that SearchMe and Mahalo have about 2.8 million unique U.S. visitors a month, while Cuil is struggling with 126,720 and Wiki Search is barely alive with 80.955. Meanwhile, Wolfram Alpha – the latest overly-hyped search engine – hasn’t been live long enough for Compete to gather enough data.

Of the group below, it is interesting to see that SearchMe has shown good traction since November, while Mahalo seems to be holding its own. Cuil, meanwhile, has to rank as one of the most over-hyped and least successful search start-ups, while Wolfram Alpha has potential to be a Cuil, although the it’s still early days.

Without a doubt, launching a search engine is a perilous exercise, not only because you’re going head to head with Google. The benchmark for new players is very high, and there’s significant potential for disappointment if the service works well but not in a much better or different way than Google.

Still, there are entrepreneurs who believe there’s a different and/or search engine to be developed keeping. And they seem to be able to raise financing from VCs who believe that a viable alternative to Google can emerge, if not a Google-killer.

Clearly, part of the challenge is managing expectations, and trying to figure out the right balance between attracting enough attention from the media, bloggers and users, while staying fairly low profile. TechCrunch provides some insight into what Blekko is trying to do, even though talking with TechCrunch could blow Blekko super-stealth approach.

(For more Blekko, check out Screenwerk, which believes Blekko “will quickly “imprint” on its intended audience and that they will embrace the search engine in earnest”. The photo is from Blekko’s home page.)

So far, I like how Microsoft is approaching the market with Bing. While it’s impossible tell from a three minute video about how a new service will actually perform, Bing appears to be different enough from Google that consumers will give it a shot. It’s impossible to tell whether Blekko has potential but it’s definitely intriguing.

Update: I think Seth Godin is making a mistake in dismissing Bing as “trying to be next next Google”.

Technorati Tags: bing, blekko, google, microsoft, search engines

This thesis is based on a few developments:

1. On the day Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was apparently scheduled to unveil Bing at the All Things D conference, Google unleashed its eye-catching Wave, a new real-time communications platform that will be unveiled later this year. (See TechCrunch for details on what Google did last Thursday.)

When it comes to new product announcements, there’s usually an unofficial code of conduct in which companies respect each other’s launch days – similar to guys agreeing to not mow each other’s lawns when socializing with the fairer sex. So Google’s decision to break the code is eye-catching.

2. There seems to be people impressed with Bing. Apple founder Steve Wozniak, for example, had some glowing things to say about Bing after seeing the demo at All Things Do.

“I don’t normally come to these business presentations and all that, but I thought it was one of the most astounding software demos I’ve ever seen,” Wozniak said. “It was so well thought out, the algorithms, the intelligence of it, really impressed me.”

If you’re Wozniak, there’s an element of risk by publicly praising a new search engine taking on Google. If Bing falls flat on its face, Wozniak’s words could come back to haunt him.

Then again, maybe Wozniak is on to something. Maybe Bing is pretty good.

If Bing starts to attract accolades from a growing number high-profile users, it could – and I stress could – give Bing’s some much-needed momentum that would never get from an expensive advertising campaign.

In search, success depends on two things: a service that works as well if not better than Google, and people excited about using it. It’s the formula that propelled Google, and allowed it to quickly leap over Excite, HotBot, Lycos, et al for supremacy in the search engine wars.

If Bing can catch catch lighting in a bottle, the phrase Ba da bing could take on a whole new meaning.

Technorati Tags: bing, google, microsoft, search engines, wave

Not surprisingly, the reviews are mixed: TechCrunch is “not super-impressed”, although “it shows a lot of promise”, while Plugged.in suggests Wolfram not a “Google-Killer But a Serious Threat”.

At the end of the day, Wolfram may or may not live up to expectations, and it may or may not become a successful search engine/search engine business. But what Wolfram’s launch illustrates once again is the challenges and perils of being the new kid on the search block.

Google has set the bar so high that the launch of new search engines can be a treacherous experience if not handled properly and positioned really well. To pitch yourself as a Google-killer will certainly attract a lot of attention but it’s likely to blow up in your face.

Look at what happened to Cuil when it burst on the scene claiming to have a larger database than Google. The problem was although Cuil’s database may have been larger, the user experience failed to be significantly more impressive so Cuil failed. (Look at the traffic numbers below to see how badly Cuil has struggled since its launch).

So, what do you do if you’re a new search engine? How do you give yourself a chance of successfully launching? How do you get the media, bloggers and consumers to give you the chance to prove yourself?

The key may be loudly proclaiming that you’re not Google, and don’t want to be Google. In a sense, Wolfram has tried to do it but when bloggers and the media think about search, they think about Google. This is why Wolfram is finding it difficult not to be compared to Google even though it’s not really competing against Google.

The second important consideration is having a service that’s amazing right out of the gate. As much as companies can learn a lot from public alpha or betas, they also provide a forum for public failure.

Look at what happened to Flock, the social media browser, when it launched a public alpha. The product wasn’t ready for prime time let alone a friends and family beta so Flock was crucified – and it’s never really recovered.

Finally, a new search engine needs to have a well-honed plan to keep pushing forward after launch. It’s one thing to throw a lot of time and resources into getting the product out the door but it’s also important to keep moving forward from a communications, marketing and business perspective as the product improves and evolves. At the end of the day, great services should, in theory, be successful. Sometimes, you need to keep telling people how well you’re doing.

Update: Henry Blodget dismisses Wolfram as having “big dreams but no chance” because “search isn’t broken. It can be improved, yes, and companies like Wolfram Alpha will show Google how to improve it. But no search engine we’ve seen, including this one, comes close to making the quantum leap in performance required to get real volumes of Internet users to switch.”

Technorati Tags: cuil, flock, google, wolfram