Blippex Takes a Fresh Approach to Web Search
August 29, 2013
This is an interesting angle: search that considers time users spend on each site, rather than the usual indicators, like link quantity and quality. GigaOM informs us about this unique approach in, “How Blippex Handles the Data Behind its Time-Driven Search Engine.” The premise is that users spend more time on sites that offer more value.
The budding Blippex is still working with a fairly small index, which is understandable considering it launched this year and has just started to get some traction. Though the Berlin-based company could have chosen to use one of the clouds floating over Europe (not literally), they are going with the web-startup flow and choosing Amazon Web Services. They are also relying on several open-source components, like MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and Redis. See the article for more details on Blippex’s use of those resources.
Writer Jordan Novet explains the unique approach, and points out one possible hitch to the time-spent model:
“The database Blippex uses keeps track of how much time users spend on a given website. The system has a way of making sure pages that sit idle — think of the tab that’s been open on your browser for three days — don’t get incorrectly interpreted as being the most valuable. . . .
“The thing is, web surfers might spend much more time poring over dense content, such as a paper in an academic journal, than on, say, a succinct news article about the same subject, even if the article is more successful at giving people just the information they’re looking for. In that case, time spent is not the best indicator of value.”
Novet makes a good point; we happy geese understand the value of a short, informative article. I checked out the site, and there is a slider aptly named “dwell factor,” with which the user can adjust how much influence time spent has on the results. If I don’t want to rely on dwell-time, though, why shouldn’t I just use Google? Well, privacy is one reason. Like DuckDuckGo, Blippex refuses to collect and share users’ information. In fact, they say, the Duck inspired their privacy policy.
Curiously, Blippex has yet to reveal how they plan to make money on the service. In fact, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, the company claims to have no business model in mind at all. Now that is a daring approach!
Cynthia Murrell, August 29, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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