Pay-per-click search network ABCSearch has launched Scour.com, a new human-assisted search engine.
“With the contributions from Scour users, I’m looking forward to a highly refined search engine with more relevant results, said Daniel Yomtobian, president and CEO of ABCSearch, which will be the exclusive sponsored listing provider for the search engine.
ABCSearch acquired the social search engine Aftervote.com for an undisclosed sum earlier this year. The company has since added new features to the search engine and rebranded it as Scour.com.
“Users that visit Scour can search the Web, just like they do [with] Google, but we give the user organic listings from Google, Yahoo and MSN,” Yomtobian said. “We have our own relevance algorithms that give users better relevancy right off the bat, because we’re infusing them with all three engines.”
On top of that, users can log in and vote on the relevancy of the natural search listings, Yomtobian said. “Over time, the spam and SEO content that the computer algorithms think are relevant on the big engines actually move down on Scour, because our users notify our system that they’re not relevant,” he said.
The company has also introduced a point rewards system to give users an incentive to use Scour.com as opposed to their everyday search engine, Yomtobian said.
As people search, vote, comment or refer friends to the search engine, they collect points that can be redeemed for a Visa gift card. According to the company, if someone searches three times a day and gets approximately 25 friends to sign up to use Scour, they could earn about $100 a year.
“We realize that users need an incentive because they’re so used to the Google mold and that’s why we created the incentives program,” Yomtobian said.
