Last week at SES San Jose, I had the good fortune to learn more about ABC Search and conducted an interview with President an CEO of ABC Search, Dan Yomtobian. The company just launched a new social search engine, Scour.com, which provides cash incentives for users to search and give ratings/feedback on search relevance. With a rapidly growing user group, we awarded our first $25 payment to a user this week and have some tremendous feedback on the site’s success.
Here is part of my interview with Dan.
SEO-Space: What are your expectations as an exhibitor for SES San Jose '08?
Dan: There are a few elements we expect from being an exhibitor at any show:
* Generate new business * Catch-up and discuss expansion with existing business * Generate awareness of new products and services * Further brand the name of the company.
We are confident all of this can be achieved.
SEO-Space: What kind of impact does exhibiting and attending shows like SES San Jose have for ABC Search?
Dan: The internet is faceless, It's important to have a physical presence so that the company can present itself as legitimate resource for growing one's e-business. This show gives the marketplace an opportunity to meet, place a face to the emails, and discuss future goals together. This is the way business started and has been the cornerstone to great success. Additionally, these shows are an excellent place to learn about what is emerging in our space.
SEO-Space: You've recently launched a new social search engine scour.com. Can you tell me more about that initiative? http://www.scour.com/
Dan: Scour is a social search engine that has been welcomed with open arms by users. Searchers needs are growing more sophisticated and we are confident that scour will provide them with a unique search experience. The goal of ABCSearch acquiring Scour was to create a fresh channel of organic traffic that we are able to police and offer exclusively to ABCSearch advertisers. Our current user base is already over 250k users and growing daily. We are confident that Scour will turn out to be the next search engine the users are looking for as well as offer ABCSearch advertisers a unique base of users.
SEO-Space: Cool... What was the thought process of paying users to search?
Dan: Habits aren't easy to break, plus it is about time for users to start being rewarded for contributing to a network. We thought this was a perfect solution to both thoughts. So far the feedback has been more than favorable.
SEO-Space: What can we expect from ABC Search in the second half of 2008 and into 2009?
Dan: ABCSearch will focus on building out our offering to advertisers as a premium source of traffic through our premium traffic channels and Scour. We are working on quite a few features that will help advertisers and partners build their e-business which is what we are here to do.
Great stuff from Dan Yamtobian over at ABC Search. Look for more interviews from SES later this week.
About Dan Yomtobian
Dan started ABCSearch in 2001. He has driven ABCSearch to become a world leader in online cost-per-click advertising. Under his leadership, ABCSearch, a network of niche-specific directories, has grown to 5 billion searches a month. His charismatic ability to attract new partnerships and strategic alliances continues to expand the network.Labels: ABC Search Interview, ses sj 2008 |