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Will you make the leap to Leapfish?
A newer search engine made its debut this week called Leapfish.com. Those that recall the launch of cuil a while back know that it wasn’t received well by many online critics. Does another newcomer within the search arena have enough traction to become a mainstay?
As a search engine marketing guru, cuil did very little for me in the way of persuading me to use the search engine on a regular basis. Although cuil’s search engine interface resembled many popular search engines, their search results were totally in a league of their own, which in my opinion was asking a lot from an average search engine user to switch over to. Additionally, recent times suggest that relevancy is one of the most important key factors in winning the search engine wars over having the largest index, a portal like homepage, or more advanced search features. So when I heard about Leapfish’s transformation from a former domain appraisal site into a search engine, my interest was sparked with a bit of skepticism.
Unlike cuil, Leapfish doesn’t rely on its own search technology and closely resembles a typical search engine interface. Users should feel right at home with the ability to select search results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN. But the real attraction lies within Leapfish’s unique interface that offers users more than search results such as news, questions and answers, videos, and more. A search for “marketing companies” for example, included a couple of press releases, YouTube videos, images, and shopping results. As such, Leapfish may be better classified as a universal search engine for its ability to aggregate related content into search results.
What’s more interesting than Leapfish’s search results however, is its monetization model. Leapfish offers businesses the ability to permanently own sponsored keyword spots ranging from generic to long tail keyword phrases. Pricing for keywords vary, but isn’t too dissimilar from the current supply and demand scenario. Typical registration fees are around $1000 and keywords can be purchased from a 1 –3 position. From that point, sponsors may choose to sell their sponsorship to another company…much like domain name buying and selling.
For myself, Leapfish offers a unique experience, however I’m not entirely sure if and when I would make a switch. After all, if it were all about great search technology and terrific add-ons, then AOL would likely be leading the race. In any regards, I think Leapfish is definitely worth looking at. Its unique but intuitive interface gives it an edge over recent search engine launches.
I’ve been in websites for the better part of a decade… building, marketing, and now optimizing. Here’s the quandary… Leapfish by being an aggregator (self proclaimed) which submits queries to other engines and pulls back the results effectively violates Google’s terms of service and has (from my finite knowledge) been blacklisted by Google. Type in the domain to Google’s search field. The actual domain does not show up in any of the results.
How are they going to be worth anything for search if the largest search engine on the planet doesn’t acknowledge their existence? It’s a complete and total waste of money.
Comment by AstonishSearch — November 12, 2008 @ 10:03 am
Christian,
Thank you for the great article. I can tell you that we are very excited at the opportunity to officially release our beta search engine and grow it over the next several years.
The entire LeapFish team, our clients and nearly 100% of our current users are excited at the fact that LeapFish offers something very unique and useful to the web. LeapFish has been working hard to deliver an engine that captures the strengths of what is already desired online, such as Google, Yahoo, YouTube and others, while simultaneously being able to deliver the breadth of the internet in a simple interface. We are eager and very excited to deliver what we have in store for LeapFish.
I have noticed that there are several bloggers and some SPAMMERS already working to create rumors and advance their own personal interests by placing copies of hateful posts in several places online. It is important your audience knows that these individuals have an agenda.
For the record :
I can tell you that similar to DogPile.com, LeapFish is in full compliance with every one of our data providers, as well as their APIs, and is growing strong relationships with each contact. In no way shape or form is any aspect of our engine “illegal” as some have posted online. Readers can learn more by visiting blog.leapfish.com
As you may know, LeapFish.com was previously a domain name appraisal service. Once the appraisal site was discontinued the site was de-listed from Google. The LeapFish.com entry will be re-listed in the coming days since LeapFish is now back online.
We have also noticed that 1 or 2 of our account executives posted their personal discount IDs as comments online. LeapFish has a strong policy against such behavior and has dealt with the matter appropriately.
Additionally, we are also excited to see some clients posting their keywords for sale on Ebay and other sites. Its great to see that kind of energy.
Thanks again for the post Christian. I invite you to follow and continue to write about our progress. If you have any questions please feel free to reach us at Media {at} LeapFish.com and keep abreast of our progress by visiting http://blog.leapfish.com
Best,
Ben Behrouzi
President & CEO
LeapFish
Comment by Ben Behrouzi — November 14, 2008 @ 3:19 pm
Christian,
Thanks for stopping by my blog the other day and for your comments. I take this opportunity to defend myself against the belligerency of the CEO of LeapFish.
I think he better examine his tactics first before calling anyone spammer.
To answer your question though, not only will I not “leap to LeapFish” but I will strongly discourage any one to use them- my clients nor my friends and here is why.
1. Over-hyping and under delivering.
I hate when any startup’s “pitch” begins with a hype. Do they honestly believe a #1 position on their will be worth $40,000??? Here is what they say int their e-mails:
“What may cost $2,000 today, might sell for $40K in a year or two. So as a method of advertising, or as an investment, it makes sense to potential buyers and search terms are going fast.”
Seriously???
2. If you are taking to task or criticizing your competitor (or even worse your partner) be ready to take some criticism as well.
They call pay per click advertising a “cash cow for Google”. Bad move if you have nothing to show for. Especially if you use Google’s data to show on your so called “search engine”. So the moment one says something critical about your company you call him a spammer?
3. Google has several ways to penalize websites- I probably been recipient of few of those myself. One way they do that is when you stop ranking for the desired keywords- John Chow comes to mind, if you remember after he was penalized he could not even rank for his own name. Another way Google can slap you is when they completely remove your website from their index- as it seams to be the case with LeapFish. And it does not matter what they claim- they have been yanked from Google index and as of today there is no sign that Google is indexing their pages.
I also urge you to reconsider direct linking to LeapFish. You can still keep your readers happy by linking to them through a tiny url or redirect that passes no rank. Google discourages linking to what they call “bad neighborhoods” and can penalize you for that. One of the ways I find if the site is a “good neighborhood” is to check if they are in Google’s index.
Sorry, I could have probably turn this comment in an extra post on my own blog.
Comment by Vlad — November 16, 2008 @ 6:19 pm
I did a search on Google just now and not only is leapfish “indexed” they appear to be 5-6th in the organic content. They also appear #1 on Yahoo & MSN right now on those engines. I don’t understand why people are so quick to dump on a new idea. Seems like a cool site to me and I wish them well. I will use it from time to time, but old habits are tough to break.
Comment by TheProsAreCons — November 19, 2008 @ 12:39 am
Check out the Management team for DotNext, the parent company of Leapfish. Lots of overblown claims of experience and expertise. Ben Behrouzi refers to himself as “mastermind”. Ben’s brother Behzad claims “deep product development and management experience, most recently developing innovative products and applications in the technology space of neurosurgery”, yet a quick look here (http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/mcnair/pdf_docs/Issues/issue85.pdf) reveals Behzad was still a student at San Diego State University in October 2005, before joining DotNext (formerly called Brabus Ventures, now trying to hide their association with EPerks) at its “inception” in 2006. Just when did all of this “deep” experience develop? So what, you ask? Well, Behzad does claim to be “responsible for the strategic planning and development of all software, applications and websites for the company’s complete line of businesses.” Sounds mighty overblown to me.
Comment by Robert Parker — November 25, 2008 @ 11:40 pm
Beaware of leapfish if you are going to try it. To try it, leapfish will ask you to install a plug in. I installed it a few months ago and have been kicking myself hard since than on this stupid decesion. Leapfish automatically launchs itself in the second tab of my Internet Explore. Since it does not follow any other search engines’s practice, I have no way to stop it after spend days Googling. If you are going to try leapfish, beaware of this. You may be stuck just like I am. On their web site, you can find a phone number: 18888604470 (http://www.leapfish.com/ContactUs.aspx). Try calling it. I tried for half an hour and could not get through.
Comment by Wayne — July 15, 2009 @ 2:28 pm
Wow that last post is very very very very hard to believe. Ive searched many of the blogs on leapfish, and although there is a lot of people out for leapfish, or shall I say a few very diligent people out to really handicap ben and leapfish, I have never heard or seen anything like that. Dont believe that for a second, and dont beleive everything you hear from people with a certain agenda toward leapfish. If you look up a lot of results for leapfish you will see a lot of the same names in other blogs bashing leapfish. Just give it a try and see what you think.
Comment by andy — August 23, 2009 @ 9:21 pm