Sunday, February 06, 2000
BullsEye search engine drops fee
Intelliseek out to corner market share
BY JOHN ECKBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Sundar Kadayam is chief technical officer and co-founder of Intelliseek Inc.
(Mike Royer illustration)
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A Web search engine developed by a Sharonville firm is now free ready for the western world
After receiving industrywide praise last year for ease of use and its comprehensive reach, the BullsEye search engine by IntelliSeek this month dropped its $49 fee and is now available to all users.
Rather than being lost on the Web, experienced and novice Internet surfers can access more than 700 other search engines and a targeted database through a free BullsEye 2 download from the company Web site atwww.intelliseek.com.
Or another route for surfers is to search at www.invisibleweb.com — although the invisibleweb is more index than search engine. By dropping the fee, the firm's new strategy is to seek revenue from banner advertising on BullsEye2, a desktop portal to the Web, and from partners interested in co-branding on the search tool.
“We are focusing on building a very substantial user base out there,” said Sundar Kadayam, chief technical officer and co-founder of IntelliSeek Inc., which has offices in One Crowne Point Court and San Francisco. “By the end of the year, we hope to have at least 5 million people using it once or twice a week. Another metric from one month of data is how long the sessions last — about 20 minutes.”
That last figure is vital to any e-company because it indicates the “stickiness” of a site or, in other words, how long surfers stick around to pursue information. The longer the sessions, the more effective the advertising.
BullsEye2 has swept through the Internet world in a wave of great reviews. Before the fee was dropped, A Yahoo Life columnist called it a “killer tool ... the best 50 bucks you'll spend all year.” PCWorld.com described BullsEye2 as a “search jackpot,” while other reviewers praised the engine for fast and pertinent results.
The company is not relying on word-of-mouth to build brand as much as clicks-of-mouse. More than 100,000 BullsEye search tools are already in the e-marketplace.
“Twenty minutes is a dream come true,” said Dan Coates, founder and vice president of consumer intelligence at Planet Feedback, an Internet start-up in Over-the-Rhine that helps consumers send feedback to companies.
He said Internet companies will spend $30 to $50 per viewer to attract traffic to a Web site. “The longer consumers stay at a site, the more you get revenues off the cost of acquisition,” he said. “It is a war for eyeballs.”
The BullsEye browser led to development of invisibleweb.com, which claims to have the world's largest source of searchable databases and archives, at 12,000. Many of the engines are organized under 22 headings that include shopping, games, health, computers, downloads, restaurants, air fares and news.
ESPN.com leads the sports genre for stickiness and has consistently registered in the 30- to 40-minute range in terms of average minutes per unique user per month, said Eric Handler, director of communications for Go.com, parent company of ESPN.com, the Web site for the sports channel ESPN based in New York City.
“When you get into the mid-30-minute range, that's incredibly impressive. A 20-minute average session is still solid,” Mr. Handler said. “Advertising sales and marketers are impressed with those kinds of figures. Chances are a banner ad and sponsored pages are getting in front of those users.”
IntelliSeek's strategy is to make the invisibleweb site an e-home for customers by presenting a array of search options — from Ragingbull.com and nine other engines directed at the stock market to search engines for 14 rental car companies, for instance.
Unlike other search engines such as Yahoo or AltaVista, which work like an index in the back of a book, the Bullseye structure is to not return every page where a search word is found, but to instead deliver targeted and ranked databases. BullsEye 2 has an automated discovery technology designed to detect new information sources and purge bad results and links.
A joint venture with the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences will put BullsEye2 on the desktop of thousands of industrial and commercial users, and give the company a significant footprint in the business-to-business e-commerce marketplace, Mr. Kadayam said.
Annual IntelliSeek revenues were not divulged. Mr. Kadayam said the firm is not focused on revenues. But with the Web growing from an estimated 130 million users today to 500 million by 2001, the firm is broadening market share by focusing on partnerships and distribution channels.
“Revenues and profit are the old school of thinking,” he said. “This space is evolving so fast, the question becomes rather than focusing on revenues, how can we capture a substantial base of users, funnel them a value-added service and then move forward?
“We realize what is more important to the company than a revenue number is to focus on the market share. It's a little bit like the Wild West. People went out there in a scramble to occupy whatever land they could.”
He said settlers didn't care whether the land was farmable or suitable for livestock. “Nobody gave a damn. They just gobbled up the land and occupied it,” Mr. Kadayam said. “At some point in time, that paid off for a number of people.”
The company plans to build its audience, in part, by approaching members of groups like the sciences center and entering into partnerships with companies to be the search tool of choice. Such industrial heavyweights as Kodak, GM and Ford are members.
The globe is clearly in the firm's cross-hairs. Through the first quarter of 1999, the company will focus on North and South America and on European markets. That will be followed by an emphasis on the former Soviet Union.
Asian markets will be addressed in the third quarter of this year, he said.
Is the firm clicking at the heels of search engines like AskJeeves? Mr. Kadayam can see the company growing dramatically in the years to come from advertising and co-branding revenues — much like Jeeves, which saw an initial public offering last year.
When he allows himself to dream, Mr. Kadayam thinks IntelliSeek could be a “multibillion-dollar” firm five years from now.
“The company is looking to be ready and qualified for an IPO,” he said. “Whether the execution is in that direction later in the year, a few other factors have to fall into place in our business strategy.”
While consumers are targeted with BullsEye2, the company's other search offering, BullsEye Pro, is directed at information professionals. It costs $149. No banner advertising is displayed on BullsEye Pro, and the cyber-tool allows users to program it for daily automatic tracking of products or information.
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