I received an outreach approach this morning about a new search engine which has been launched to rival the likes of Google.
Oparla, which pays users to search, claims to use social media technology to provide a more accurate search. Visitors can rank sites, comment on results and message other users asking for advice.
The release states:
“Oparla will reward one user every day with a cash bonus of up to £1000. The lottery like system will be based on account holders signing in and using the search engine to find web pages and images online.
Oparla’s interface uses a five star site ranking system, giving each site shown in the search results a community mark for usefulness and relevance to the search query.
I decided to write about this because I was approached properly. The person/agency which approached me had clearly read my blog and understood the kind of topics that I covered. It was a very personal approach and I felt that it was good enough to warrant a post about the site because most of all it was relevant.
I get quite a lot of bad approaches but I am not one to rant and rave about them as I don’t think that’s fair on the individual. I either delete them or email the person back with some constructive advice.
I think Oparla seems like an interesting idea to improve searches by using people to rate searches. However, this site will need critical mass if it is ever to challenge the smaller search engines never mind Google. So I can fully understand why it is funding a daily prize draw to increase its user base.
I gave it a quick test this morning but I haven’t used it thoroughly yet – I would be interested to hear what you make of it?
