I just came across an interesting article entitled, “The Premier Meta-Search Engine, SearchGuy.com announces launch of the beta version of its refreshing new design with enhanced features” from Yahoo!, it’s about a meta search engine that called SearchGuy.com. With the goal as the “World’s Leading Search Engine of Choice”, SearchGuy has integrated its Web search with image, video, news, shopping, tag, photos, and the proposed job and blog search. Though SearchGuy did not gained the brand value as Google or Yahoo! did on the Web, I think it is progressing quite well, albeit slow since its first inception in 2001. On its “About page”, SearchGuy has released the Spanish version of search engine and also released the current stable version of 2.0. In addition, SearchGuy also developed the desktop search, toolbar as well as the Firefox plugin that with the purpose of increase the quality of the user experience for its users.

However, SearchGuy faced many challenges in the beginning of this year. They are currently undergo the transition period as Lenny Ratchitsky, the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), is leaving the Company to pursue other business interests, according to this article. As stated in the above, I observed that SearchGuy has follow the footstep of some established players in product development such as the proposed job and blog search, Firefox plugin, desktop search, and etc. I wonder how this meta search engine will achieve the product differentiation when compared to some of its competitors in the market. On the other hand, in terms of meta search, it’s no longer a new thing. According to an article from UC Berkeley, it has questioned about are “smarter” meta-searchers still smarter? I wonder SearchGuy still has some more room left to grow when there are some established meta search engines such as jux2, Dogpile, Clusty, Mamma, and Ithaki in the market. It seems that the main challenge for SearchGuy now is to refine its search strategy in order to meet the specific needs and wants of the users on the Web.