SearchMe was a visual search engine based in Mountain View, California. It organized search results as snapshots of web pages — an interface similar to that of the

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's and

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's album selection. In July 2009, the company lost funding and the search engine went

offline In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity, and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed as "on li ...

History

Founding

SearchMe was founded in March 2005 by Randy Adams and John Holland. Adams was inspired to start this search engine when his 5-year-old son was having difficulty reading. He hoped to create a search engine that "would improve the experience of finding information online".

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...

spent millions of dollars to fund SearchMe during the website's opening years. In March 2008, the site was launched in

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status. In April 2008, the company launched its search engine on the Internet.

Offline in July 2009

The company had 1.8 million visitors in March 2009, but by May of the same year, the number of visitors decreased to 600,000. On July 24, 2009, SearchMe went

due to financial troubles, such as maintaining the servers. Of its 45 employees, SearchMe announced in July 2009 it planned to dismiss 35. The company attempted to concentrate on the market of broadband TV.

Searches

As search queries were being made, SearchMe returned categories that were related to the topic. The search engine had Facebook and Twitter links so that the results could be shared. The top of the screen displayed the screenshot, while the bottom revealed the

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and a site's description. Moving the mouse from left to right made the screen "flip in the corresponding direction". SearchMe's

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was "You'll know it when you see it." As of March 2008, the website had indexed one billion pages.

Revenue

It required about 3 million searches every day for the company to "

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". The website received its revenue from

advertisements Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of interest to consumers. It is typically us ...

. Advertisements were displayed through screenshots of the products or companies that were being promoted. Search results were ranked through

algorithms In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for per ...

and the number of views a website had received. Websites that were "visually appealing" were ranked higher than those that were not.

Criticism

SearchMe had been criticized for not providing the number of search results, causing users to not know whether they were perusing through 10 results or 1000 results. Some of SearchMe's screenshots were difficult to read, causing users to decide whether a site is relevant based on its appearance. However, the website highlighted the search queries for easier perusal of the screenshot.

Other services

In 2007, SearchMe founded Wikiseek, which indexed Wikipedia pages and sites that were linked to from Wikipedia articles. In October 2008, SearchMe released a

music streaming service A music streaming service is a type of online streaming media service that focuses primarily on music, and sometimes other forms of digital audio content such as podcasts. These services are usually subscription-based services allowing users to s ...

, which enables users to download an unlimited number of songs. The service relied on Imeem's collection of music.

References

{{Web search engines Defunct American websites Companies based in Mountain View, California Software companies based in Mountain View, California Software companies established in 2005 Defunct internet search engines Defunct online companies of the United States 2005 establishments in California American companies established in 2005 Software companies disestablished in 2009 2009 disestablishments in California American companies disestablished in 2009