rolist

[newriver]

free during beta, seen "elsewhere"
http://www.rolist.com

[ihelpyou]

They rotate the top 5 results for any given keyword. I guess sites bid on the keyword phrases and the top 5 bids are then rotated per search done.

I wonder why we see all these new PPC engines sprouting up? It would seem to me to not be a good business move to open up another one and another one and another one?

[Advisor]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
I wonder why we see all these new PPC engines sprouting up? It would seem to me to not be a good business move to open up another one and another one and another one? It's because nobody has an original thought in their little heads any more! They see one company (GoTo) making money at something and therefore have to jump on the bandwagon with it.

J

[ihelpyou]

I also saw they have a "patent pending" on the site. Why? How hard would it be to rotate results? Don't must PPC work basically the same way? Even regular search engines can rotate results.

[Advisor]

Yes, but doesn't "patent pending" just sound oh-so-cool???

J

[Mel]

Hi All:
Why are we seeing all these new PPC engines springing up?

1. This is the only search engine model making money
2. It requires no great prgramming skills to set up a PPC engine versus developing a new and efficient SE Algo.
3. What Jill said

Personall I'm all for it - the more the merrier - let hundreds of PPC engines fight for the available bit of traffic and eventually none on them will succeed.

[ihelpyou]

Mel, that is very good as it's exactly what I was thinking. Very true indeed and definitely Not a joke.

[JuniorHarris]

I was thinking they were scamming, er, dreaming, I mean inventing new models because the existing ones were not that successful! Let's see what we can come up with today that these jokers, er, webmasters might swallow today!~ :rolleyes:

A fool and his money are soon to part!~;)

[Rolist]

Hello everyone:

We saw some traffic coming from this forums and noticed some of the replies to this thread. We would like to infom everyone of who we are and about our search engine, Rolist.

Rolist is a true rotating search engine. Everytime a new visitor performs a search, Rolist will rotate the search results given everyone an equal opportunity to be listed first. We rotate all of our results, not just the top 5. Therefore, if there were 100 search results for a keyword, the first visitor would see 1-100. The next visitor would then seen 2-100 and 1 would be on the bottom. The process would then continue for the third visitor, who would see 3-100 and 1-2 on the bottom. This is demonstrated on our website at www.rolist.com.

The pay-per-click model of our search engine does not require any "bids". The cost-per-click will be a fixed amount. This amount has yet to be determined and we are looking for feedback on the cost. We want to make sure what we charge is fair for everyone.

Yes, we are patent-pending and for good reasons. The technology took a very long time to develope and we wanted to make sure our concept and code are protected. Believe us, the concept might sound easy, but to get it to work is hard and thus the reason for the patent-pending.

If you have any questions, please email us at info@rolist.com, or you may email me directly at charles_petruzzi@rolist.com. Thank you for your time.

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums Rolist! :hi:

Thanks for explaining your engine in more detail! It sounds like you have a slightly different twist to things. Will definitely be worth watching.

Don't mind us, we just get a big kick out of all the different "PPC" things that keep popping up all of the sudden. You can see we are composed of a good many SEO's, who some of us, .... me, for one, do not like ppc. :) Nothing against you at all.... just funny how all these ppc's can come online and all of them expect to make lots of money. You may be very different though. Only time will tell. Welcome!

[Advisor]

Welcome, Rolist!

Like Doug, I'm not a fan or user of PPC or bidding for placement, but there's obviously a market out there for it if you can figure out how to get into it and make a name for yourself!

Good luck with it!

Jill

[Spider Man]

Welcome Rolist,

This amount has yet to be determined and we are looking for feedback on the cost.

It's an interesting idea and it's good to see you here to talk about it.

<Begin DevilsAdvocate>
is there a limit on the number of results there can be for a particular search and will the number of results affect the cost (as surely some areas will be more popular than others). Take your 100 results example - i'll spend 90% of the time off the front page (if i'm understanding it right)? Seems like something that I'm pretty good at doing for free :D
<End DevilsAdvocate>

[ihelpyou]

Seems like something that I'm pretty good at doing for free :D
Now that's funny.

[Rolist]

Sorry for the contradiction. I'll make sure to double check my posts for now on. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, I don't want people thinking the wrong issues about Rolist.

Let us correct our last post:

There are no limits to the number of websites that can be contained in a search result. Therefore, as explained before, we will rotate the total number of search results for each new visitor. A more detailed answer to this can be found at:

http://www.rolist.com/how_rolist_works.cfm

Remember, we rotate all results, not just the first 5.

Thank you for the warm welcome. I hope everyone notices our difference from a typical PPC or "bid-for-placement" search engine and the benefits we can have for all of you.

If anyone has any suggestions or comments, please don't hesitate to email us directly at info@rolist.com or myself at charles_petruzzi@rolist.com.

[ihelpyou]

Okay. That brings us back to the question of if a result has "this" many sites in it, won't the price be different depending on how many sites come up for each term? In other words, if a search term has 100,000 sites in the result, won't that term be a lot cheaper than a term that returns 10,000 results?

[bobking]

I don't see the advantage yet to the user. How does rotating results improve the experience for the searcher?

Is there any kind of algorithm at play here or is it just any result that gets accepted for that keyword is assumed relevant and rotated accordingly. If so, how does that give the searcher any assurance of relevance?

As for the advertiser, maybe I'm missing something here, but what incentive would there be to bid more? I'm assuming none since they would all be rotated.

As it is, I'm not seeing the advantage to the advertiser or the searcher. If it's just being fair to webmasters I just don't feel like that may be enough to get it off the ground. Most of the people I deal with in ad situations couldn't care less about being fair. they want to be on top period. maybe thats just me ?

[bobking]

oops. i didn't mean to start a new thread. doing two things at once.

[ihelpyou]

no Prob Bob. Fixed.

[newriver]

Welcome Rolist!:thebomb:

Glad to see the traffic from here was enough to make you notice and participate.

One piece of advice for you that had paid off for me, the people here will not sugar coat anything for you, but they will give you good pieces of info that you can use.

Your premise is interesting, and I for one am excited to see something new. I think you will need to spend some time thinking about how you can be profitable with all your participants bidding the same thing. One lesson I learned, and live by comes from the movie wall street. Greed is good, and you can always trust greed. your model does not seem to allow healthy competition, or for greedy site owners to be number one.

As an example:
My targeted search term is not very competitive in the world of SEO, there is really three sites that understand SEO competing on google, AV, inktomi, and a few others. then there are the 3-4 sites competing on overture and findwhat.com. There are however thousands of sites selling my product. Their sites ****, but they are in there. under your model the 8-9 sites of quality would spend most of the time not on the first page, and users would see the other sites which legitimately stink on the front page most of the time. If i was a browser of your SE, i would not return if the system showed me those results most of the time.
any site owner will register his site, the good one's will pay to be on top, but i think you are setting yourself up for a let down under this system as i understand it.

If I were you, and I'm not, I would adopt a system similiar to overture with a twist. I would classify the rotation into groups. The top five, next five, and next five rotate amongst themselves. that way site owners are not killing each other outbidding each other, but you can buy your grouping. people willing to pay to be on top can, people who are willing to appear 6-10 can pay for that, etc...

just a thought, we'll be watching with enthusiasm.

P.S. Will you be bidding on overture when you turn the site on?

Doug, now if you can just get google guy to come here!

[Rolist]

Hello everyone:

Thank you for all the info and ideas relating to Rolist. I understand there are still questions at hand, so let me address these issues.

bobking:
We have talked to many website owners and search engine users in our local area (South Florida). The most common response website owners gave us was being notice on the Internet was too expensive. Search engine users reponded that the Internet has become too narrow. By using Rolist, website owners find an affordable alternative to get noticed on the Internet and search engine users are introduced to many new website to visit and explore.

newriver:
The idea you suggested is very good. We did consider such a business model early on, but wanted to make sure everyone who lists with Rolist is treated equally. We understand there are some website owners and companies who always want to be listed first, no matter what the cost. These website owners and companies probably make up about 5% of the Internet if not less. We are more interested in the other 95% or more of the Internet who never had a chance of being noticed. Therefore, we did drop the model you have suggested because of this reason.

Some have asked what would the cost-per-click be? We are leaving that up the you. We would like to find a reasonable cost everyone would be willing to pay and can afford.

To be frank, would everyone rather us incorporate a pay-for-inclusion model instead of the pay-per-click? Please let me know.

Thank you,
Charles Petruzzi
charles_petruzzi@rolist.com

[newriver]

Not speaking for anybody else here, simply for myself.

Our site is not an SEO site, we obviously sell insurance. We have paid for the Yahoo listing happily, several looksmart listings happily, pad to index every page in inktomi and altavista as well. I don;t think we will be doing the AV and inktomi again upon renewal.

We have also participated in Goto(Overture) pay per clicks when we want extra traffic during certain high selling months, as well as findwhat.

We are most happy with the pay for inclusion model because financially it has yielded the highest reward for the lowest cost. Having said this, I don't think we would pay to be included in a site until we knew there was going to be traffic from it.

We would entertain paying for inclusion into rolist if the initial price was low while you gained popularity, and there was a spiderable directory style link to be gained from it even if you did not deliver traffic to us for quite some time. This way, even if you could not deliver on traffic, much the same way ah-ha did not deliver, we would hopefully gain another link to our site from a hopefully high pageranked site.

Hope my text here gets across my intended point, not sure it did.

[ihelpyou]

Unless your target market is "personal" web site owners, I think you underestimate a "business" on the net, beit small, medium, or large. Most sites I know of know that to be noticed on the net today requires some upfront cash. Most know that if they are truly serious about their business on the net, they will happily cough up the reasonable small amounts of cash necessary for long-term success.

I am with Bob on this one. Unless you get 100,000 visitors a day, I see no real benefit to a business site to be listed. Moreso, if you do give a listed site some PageRank value, as newriver suggests.

[Rolist]

newriver:
I think your idea is a excellent one. I will talk to my associates about the pay-for-inclusion model. As you stated, it would be the most cost effective model for everyone. You are definately right in the fact that traffic to the site will be less at the beginning and people who register early should receive a greater savings for taking the risk with us.

How much do you think we should charge per website?

We do not use a spider right now, instead members input their website manual just like with Overture or Findwhat. We then review these websites ourselves for relevance.

The BETA will be using a "filler" database, DMOZ, to produce search results if no websites have registered for a particiular keyword.

By the way, we are able to rotate the DMOZ database. The BETA will basically work where the Rolist websites will rotate on top of the DMOZ websites. Basically, we will have two lists rotating at once.

I'm very happy we did receive traffic from these forums and were able to find all of you. Everyone input here has been great and we are receiving many good ideas. Thank you everyone.

-Charles Petruzzi
charles_petruzzi@rolist.com

[newriver]

I don't think you need a spider to start a growing directory option for the first sites to sign up to recieve some pagerank value from their listing.

If you started a small directory option of your own, that a spider (particularly from google) could index, I'd pay twenty-thirty bucks for a listing.

if in a year you had traffic coming from rolist itself, i'd be interested in renewing at whatever rates you charged on a pay for inclusion basis.

For your directory I don;t think it would be that hard, simply have a link a spider can <index,follow> showing your sites that have registered, does not even need to be prominantly shown from your home page. Maybe you could break them down into 4-10 sub-categories.

[Rolist]

Thank you newriver,

I have been talking everything over with my partners and they too are agreeing about the PageRank links.

Do you know of anyone who can tell us how to set up such a page for PageRank where we can put the URLs of the website who registered with Rolist?

My partners and I have also been considering a pay-for-inclusion model instead of the pay-per-click. I think this would be more attractive to webmasters. Keep the fee extremely low and serve more of a community.

I hope everyone who has visited our website likes and understands our concept. If you have any questions, please email me directly at charles_petruzzi@rolist.com.

-Charles

[newriver]

I am actually a computer neanderthawl, I am sure there a bunch of people hanging around these forums who can hook you up. Why don;t you make a post in the paid or free help forum?