Nusearch releases developer interface with unlimited queries

Having recently dealt a blow to the incumbent keyword advertising providers with it's free Active Search product, Nusearch, the UK's first serious global search player, now has its sights set on Web Services.

Many search engines provide a Web Services, or XML interface, to allow developers to incorporate results into their own sites. Normally, the caveat is either pay up, or put up with a limited daily ration of queries.

This is no longer true. With Nusearch's new offering, any web developer can use Nusearch's high quality search results in their own sites, with no cost implication and no usage limits, so long as the source of the information is credited to Nusearch with a link back.

This means thousands of websites, previously dependent on linking through to external sites for search, can now display, legally and without limitation, high quality results from Nusearch's comprehensive and up to date index.

I caught up with Nusearch's founder and chief software architect, Giles Chanot, at a recent industry gathering in Bristol, and asked him to explain how it worked.

Q: Can you explain the thinking behind the Web Services offering?

GC: Sure. We thought to ourselves, isn't it a shame that search, often thought of as a free activity, is in reality locked away inside a handful of proprietary sites. Want high quality search results on your site? You've either got to pay a subscription fee, or you need to allow your users to leave you site.

Q: So you're aiming this at web developers who want to keep their users focused on their own site.

GC: Precisely. You've worked hard to get those eyeballs – why would you want them leaving your site to perform search activity? By providing this service for free, we open up a whole new realm of possibilities for search integration, and any developer, anywhere in the world can start playing around with this, today.

Q: So there really are no barriers to entry – what's in it for you?

GC: We expect people to credit us with a link (and an optional Nusearch logo). This provides us with a bit of raised profile, it also provides the user with the reassurance that the search results are genuine and of high quality – in other words, this interface is worth using, you're going to find some quality sites and it isn't just a front to some unsavoury content.

Q: Going back to your recently launched keyword advertising service, a lot of people have been asking me how they should go about setting it up on their sites – can you run through it?

GC: It's simplicity itself. With our Active Search product, anyone with a website or blog can put a Nusearch search box on their home page, and every time someone uses it to search the site or the web, the owner earns a credit, redeemable against keyword advertising. In addition, the first thousand people to sign up receive $1000 worth of credits, each. Hence “Million Dollar Giveaway”.

Q: How does this differ from other providers' search boxes I've seen?

GC: Take Google for example. Many people put a Google search box on their home page without considering the value that provides to Google. All they get in return is a convenient way to search their site. We're offering the same service, except we recognize the value of those incoming hits and reward people accordingly. The million dollars is a special incentive to get people motivated.

Q: Is there any way to manually submit your site?

GC: Yes, with our Add Site feature, not only can you get your site spidered in realtime, but you can check its status to see when it was last checked and how many pages are held in the index.