I have had the pleasure to share some questions with CometQuery after my recent post about this new engine.
I asked some questions, even delving deeply into what CQ offers. Even though I did not receive answers to all of my questions (I did really expect to have them all answered), I was surprised at the quick, almost immediate, response and great information that it did provide.
Here were my questions (pittfall) and the responses from CometQuery (CQ):
pittfall – In the ever changing environment of the Internet, and specifically search technology, what steps have you employed to separate CometQuery from other search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask.com and others?
CQ – CometQuery, unlike many other search engines is not here to make us tons of money, we feel if people enjoy our website they will donate, we may in the future have a option to turn on adverts, but at current we are adless which helps the user get what they really want, content! We also feel that a bot can only do so much, and as such we think that the user should be able to effect the rank, and thus we enable them to report what a site contains and reviews them, in turn users can see if a site has spyware, adverts, popups ect. We have many other plans to go ahead with but I am sure you can understand I can’t really go into these to much as they are only ideas on the table at the moment!
pittfall – Based upon your privacy statement, you are not storing much of the information that would be necessary to help you to understand your users, I store more information about my visitors than you do about yours. However, you have said, “we need YOUR help to make CometQuery the best!” What are you looking for from users, bloggers and developers?
CQ – Yes, we do really think that search is a area which should be kept private. We don’t want users to fear that something they search for will be kept and even published {like AOL did with there search data}. So in turn we do need users to help us and send in data such as bugs and requests, unlike other search engines we really do act on every single persons view. As far as it goes from Bloggers, most of the comments we have got are from bloggers, granted they are not all positive, but if everyone liked our search engine it would be pointless my small team and I working on it! So really all I can ask from bloggers is to blog about CometQuery! In such of developers, that is something we really are interested in. We know that at the moment people may be unsure working with the API for CQ in fear that we are new and might change it, but we won’t, everything will be backward compatible, so we want developers to tell us what information they need and we shall make it public and in the open.
pittfall – “RankCheck” looks to be a tool that people can use to help them analyze their and others sites. It points out some specifics like: is it cached on CometQuery, if it is cached on Google, whether it uses spyware, Google PageRank, SearchQuery’s Rank and the pages that are cached in your index. CometQuery has also been compared to “Google’s David,” (a biblical reference to David and Goliath), however, you appear to be comparing yourself to Google. Why?
CQ – This to be honest was both a PR mistake and a professional mistake, we did not intend for it to happen as such, and we wanted to tear the market from Google, after all we feel Google stores data it should not, and helps very little, but now we are working on more original ideas.
pittfall – It is plain to see that your intention is to build tools for users and developers, and we should see them coming out in the future, but why would you open your index and servers free for developers to query your index unabated? It appears that you are calling for others to try to take down your servers. Do you think that you can handle the weight of millions of queries every minute?
CQ – Hah, yes we can handle the queries. We are asking for open creation and feel that A) we have other sites that can help fund cometquery and B) donations are always welcome, Wikipedia.org runs of donations and we feel if we make a service that everyone likes they will donate to us! To open up our service works for us also, the more search engines out there the more it helps users, and the more all the search engines battle, right now Google have a major market share, and this is not good for anyone, so we hope others will feel now the data can be got without terabytes of bandwidth and hard drive space it might allow others to make a difference in the market.
pittfall – What do you utilize to store images, similar to Ask.com and Alexa, from websites in your index? Do you use a third-party?
CQ – We at the moment use 3rd party, however this is about to change in well.. 3 days? We will be using a live updating image storing. Stay tuned on this matter.
pittfall – How can developers get more involved in creating tools?
CQ – First check out the developer area, which should give you some insight into what we shall be giving them, and then email us at dev@cometquery.com and we shall work on getting them upon and started and even release custom data if they need.
pittfall – Did you develop the compression system that you are utilizing or is this from a third-party?
CQ – This is one area I can not go into to much detail with, but it is developed by us, and we shall soon release tools for compression. It works in the way of having a 5×5 pixel image and dots and colors create words, however a bit more complex than that.
pittfall – How many domains do you currently have in your index? And, at what rate of growth are you building your index?
CQ – There is not tool yet to tell us how many sites we have, silly I know but it is how our servers are setup. We do however crawl at around 500,000 sites per a hour. Slow at the moment but it will get faster.
pittfall – Do you plan on providing additional vertical abilities like image, video, news, blog and social searching?
CQ – Well it is on our list, however at the moment we want to get search aced before going to work on anything else, but image, video etc should be out early next year. Blogs may come out much sooner!
pittfall – How do you plan to market your engine?
CQ – We don’t yet! We hope that bloggers will blog us etc. We are on a limited fund and thus we can’t really go and spend £50,000 on a TV advert, so we need word of mouth. And we have some fun events coming up in England, including our opening party etc. We will also hopefully be attending some SE meetings.
pittfall – Can you give SEOs like myself insight into ranking higher in your query results?
CQ – Hah, I should not really, but the main main way of getting higher is having a site users like, soon we shall have tools integrated to our browser which comes out soon that allows users to rank sites with very little effort, so if your site is great in the eyes of a user it will rank high! Of course we also use the same systems most other search engines use, link backs etc. However if a site that links to you contains spyware BEFORE they link to you, it means you can lose rank.
pittfall – I would also like to add that I would enjoy having a drink with you (http://www.cometquery.com/dev/?page=soon), how often do you make it to Florida?
CQ – Heh, in fact next year! But that’s another story. And I am a tad young to drink anything tasty! Me, I guess I will be 18 next year, want drinks do they have over there? WKD?
pittfall – Unfortunately, the state law is 21 and up. I wasn’t sure at first what you were referring to, WKD, but after a quick search on CQ, I found that it is a vodka drink. I’d try it, but I haven’t seen it around my area. I’ll watch for it!
pittfall – And lastly, (I am sure you have been asked this, and will for some time to come) how are you paying for this? Is this a research project or supported from a large benefactor that wants to give back to the Internet community? Should we expect to see ads coming to the search results?”
CQ – I own a few other sites, none make that much but it helps keep it alive. At current I think I lose around only $300 a week, however that is soon to grow. So we will be working on finding ways to fund this, however I can promise you we won’t be using massive adverts or anything. No large benefactor as yet 
, but hey I can hope! We did this to give back to the community, from 14 I used the Internet for lots of reasons, from things I should not being that young to just finding out great information. It is such a amazing place the Internet and I hope that those who abuse it will join us in making it better.
pittfall – Thank you again for your transparent behavior, your great engine and providing information to me.
CQ – Your welcome. Thank you for your blog and I hope that one day CometQuery can swing you from using the search engine you currently use!
I am guessing that the interview was with Daniel Jenkins (based upon the age).
CometQuery looks to be a remarkable tool that is one of the best new products I have seen in some time. Keep up the good work CQ!
p.s. Thank you for remembering Veteran’s Day. From a U.S. Marine Vet.
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