Despite Google’s dominance – or perhaps because of it – many small companies are entering the search field. Often they use some variation on the social networking approach, or combine it with search. I receive press releases from these companies regularly, and it’s interesting to read the release and check out what they’re trying to accomplish.
What you're about to read, then, are some mini-reviews. Where possible, I've visited and poked around each of these sites; each of them had at least one idea worth thinking about. If there is interest, I may revisit one or two of these sites to do a full-fledged review.
3Luxe.com
I'm starting with 3Luxe. It's a cross between a shopping search engine, review site, and social network.
3Luxe's goal is to make shopping easier by offering you a few well-researched choices for products or services. The company has "over a dozen writers and researchers located around the country who do the research for each product category." While they do make their money from advertising placement, their search engine results are objective in the sense that nobody can buy their way into a placement. The social network aspect is that the site lets its users vote on their picks.
I was a little worried that the site wouldn't be fine-grained enough in its offerings. After all, if you search for a digital camera, the search engine doesn't know if you're a total beginner, an experienced digital photographer, or someone very used to film cameras making the jump to digital. So when I searched for digital cameras, I was relieved to find that it returned eight separate categories - until I saw the list:
Yes, Digital SLR is on the list twice, and I'm not sure why "cordless phones," "receivers" and "photo printers" are on the list; they seem a little like stretches to include, albeit justifiable. On the other hand, I rather like the presentation of the actual results; here's a screen shot for video cameras (shrunk and cropped to fit, so it only shows one review):
Near the bottom you can see the "Luxe it or leave it" feature that lets users vote a particular choice up or down. You don't have to be a registered user to vote. The link takes you to the full review. You can also leave a comment on the review, but you have to register to do so. That probably means the comments will be more useful and less spammy. The site covers a ton of categories, and is still in beta. "3Luxe is like the trusted friend who knows all about a product category in which you want to make a purchase," explains Doug Worple, CEO of 3Luxe and one of the two brothers running the company. It will be interesting to see how this hybrid approach fares in the market.
Search Engine News 
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