I would commend a blog post by Stephen Arnold on the future of paid-for web search, prompted by the release of Neeva which comes free for three months and then you pay $4.95 a month. (That fee is in very very small print on the home page!) Over the years several companies have tried to take on Google, notably Exalead, and of course Microsoft. A lot of potential here for the research community to carry out a host of A/B tests on Neeva vs Google. Incidentally if you have not come across Stephen before he is a very well informed (and usually highly sceptical) watcher and analyst of the search business. Some years ago now we co-authored a guide (actually quite a large report) about the successful management of enterprise search but it failed to make the best sellers list. Indeed it failed to sell at all!
Is there now a business in paid-for web search?
About Martin White
Martin is an information scientist and the author of Making Search Work and Enterprise Search. He has been involved with optimising search applications since the mid-1970s and has worked on search projects in both Europe and North America. Since 2002 he has been a Visiting Professor at the Information School, University of Sheffield and is currently working on developing new approaches to search evaluation.
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