ASK HN: Is there room for a new search engine?
To begin, I do search engine marketing for Roomorama.com, I'm part of the founding team, and love working there, though am always thinking about new potential projects, like I'm sure most of us do.
The theory I'm working under for the concept I'd like to get feedback on, is that "search", as it currently exists for the most part, is an indexing and parsing of HTML, while the web, and what people actually want when using search, isn't HTML. Its objects that match their long tail criteria.
When you think about it, the results that come from the current process, are only a good approximation of what searchers really want. If I'm looking for a blog post about the American Jobs Act from a liberal blogger under 500 words, will Google be able to really help? Or if I'm looking for an event, the weekend of October 15, in Denver, that's good for kids, will Google help by returning HTML pages? Not really. If you're a savvy web user, you go to the vertical search engine that is best (indeed for jobs for example, or eventful for events, or whatever). But that requires the person knowing those engines, which most people in the real world dont.
Google is trying to get structured data into search results (ITA software acquisition as example), but it has been kind of a mess. Try searching "apple pie recipe" and look at the mess that they offer up. I have no doubt theyre going to improve, but the major search engines architecture and infrastructure is so fundamentally based on the concept of HTML web pages being the backbone of the internet, that I think its going to be hard for them to really move away from that.
Is there room for a search engine that starts from the beginning, looks at each vertical, brings structured data into the system (via partnerships with the vertical search engines that exist) and intelligently returns the results that their searchers really want, with a smart way of being able to sort and refine?
Just throwing it out there. Appreciate any thoughts you'd have!