When it comes to search engines, you have no shortage of options. Even so, most people that I know turn to Google to find just about anything on the Internet. However, even Google is flawed, depending on what exactly you want to find.
As an alternative or supplemental search engine, you might want to consider giving NowRelevant a try. This is an off-shoot from the Internet Time Machine project that you may have already read about. Well, the NowRelevant search engine is now open to public beta.
What Is NowRelevant?
When you use a conventional search engine like Bing or Google, you get fairly universal results for your search term across the entirety of the world wide web. With NowRelevant, you are searching for relevant content within the last two weeks.
That’s easily the most critical difference that separates NowRelevant from just about every other search engine. It doesn’t concern itself with postings from a year ago; it only looks at what’s being said about your subject in the last fourteen days.
For people researching news and trending topics, these kinds of search results are much more useful. Further still, the types of results that come up with NowRelevant can be remarkably different from Google in another way.
Skip the Corporate Hoopla?
You can watch the demo video for some real world examples, but the crux of it is that Google search results can be very formulaic. You get hit by sponsored ads in the top and side, official corporate sites and Wikipedia in the first few slots, high-profile news sites like CNN and NYT, and then the “SEO bloodbath” to capture your sales lead.
With NowRelevant, according to the developers, you can skip all of that and get straight to the news and happenings that are most relevant to your subject. You can also adjust the slider between one and fourteen days to define how far back you want to go.
Even in searching for my own name, the first result in Google is my website. That makes sense, but what if you want to know what I’ve been doing lately? NowRelevant brings up a recent Dot Com Pho gathering and something about the Rihanna concert that I attended. That’s more current.
An Affiliate Program Too?
There is some advertising on NowRelevant and you can read more about the PPC campaigns on the appropriate page. Related to this is the affiliate program.
That’s the good news. The other good news is that they are quick to provide you with all sorts of banners and text ads that you can use to promote NowRelevant. The bad news is that there isn’t much information about the affiliate program laid out in a clear manner.
What is the revenue share? Is it ongoing? What is the payment schedule? What is the minimum payment threshold? What payment methods are available? It would have really helped if NowRelevant set up a simple FAQ page to address these kinds of questions.
Aside from that, NowRelevant looks like it could be a useful research tool, particularly for SEO and PPC experts, who want to know what is “now relevant” in their current areas of interest. It won’t replace Google, I don’t think, but it’s a good supplementary tool.
Link: NowRelevant
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