Hi, "this guy" here:-) If people come to a site but don't come back then it is reasonable to conclude that "it's a bad website", but as the blog entry put it "without any real users in the first place it is hard to gauge whether people like it or not".
Note also that it isn't intended to be a general purpose search engine, but a niche search engine to try and find some of the fun and interesting content, e.g. relating to hobbies and interests, which used to be at the core of the web but which can be difficult to find anywhere nowadays.
The general purpose search engines search the whole internet, and as a result claim that you can search for anything on the whole internet, even going beyond that to answer questions which aren't on the internet as such, e.g. "What is my IP?" and "What time is it?". However, niche search engines only search specific parts of the internet, and only claim to be able to deliver results relating to their specific topic, e.g. you wouldn't ask the search on a car forum what the weather is today.
I am a search guy and I would like you to succeed. But I don't get it. The name of the site is bland and makes me think you are a white label search service for websites. On the homepage it says "Open source search engine and search as a service for personal and independent websites." but it offers me to reason about why I (or anyone) would want to use it. The content it actually searches is random and of no real particular value as far as I can tell. Also, you are trying to avoid spam sites, but once you reach a certain size that's all you would see is people submitting spam sites. If you blocked people from submitting you would never get all the diamonds in the rough you are trying to expose.
You need to find an actual niche that solves a real problem people have and can understand and orient everything you do to tackling that. Then expand from there.
> general purpose search engines search the whole internet, and as a result claim that you can search for anything on the whole internet, even going beyond that to answer questions which aren't on the internet as such, e.g. "What is my IP?"
I think there are two distinct things here:
1) Searching the whole internet
2) Returning results that aren't necessarily from the Internet, but instead are convenience features of the engine
I understand that you're not trying to replicate things like "What's the weather today", but when I want results about <very specific classic car X>, how can you return meaningful results without searching the whole Internet?
Put another way, if you don't search the whole Internet, the results are going to be limited to only the curated list of sources you do search. This can be useful in its own way - i.e. if you are positioning this as "search this list of curated sources", but also means the site will only be as useful as the curation you provide.
For example, I dabble with Software Defined Radio. If I search your site for "rtlsdr", a very popular package, I get three results. Those results are somewhat interesting, but I know there's a whole world of content out there related to rtlsdr that I'm not seeing here.
So adding a bit to what the parent commenter was saying - if I'm using your site to look for my particular niche, and I only see three results when I know there are many more, I'm not likely to continue using your site to search for rtlsdr.
It then leads me to wonder what I can search for, or if there's much utility to searching at all.
Please take these comments in the spirit they are intended - I think a search engine that helps find things on the "old" web, or just helps me cut through all of the SEO optimized crap is a great idea. It's something I want to use. But I can also understand why someone might try a search and move on.
Just an idea, but maybe providing a way for independent creators to submit their site for indexing (or for an interested user like me to submit a site) would help increase your reach.
Ok, but answering questions like "what time is it?" doesn't subtract from the usefulness of a search engine. Seems like you're saying it makes your search engine better somehow because it can't do the above.
Google is demonstrating this nicely now. It's become almost useless, replacing the query I actually typed with something more popular.
And when that doesn't happen, the results are likely seo'd junk. (The latter is not purely googles fault, it's just that smaller search engines aren't targeted as much).
Try looking up a phone number (by number) in google for a great example of nothing but spam results.
Note also that it isn't intended to be a general purpose search engine, but a niche search engine to try and find some of the fun and interesting content, e.g. relating to hobbies and interests, which used to be at the core of the web but which can be difficult to find anywhere nowadays.