New Search Engine: CliqueSearch

There's a new search engine on the block, and while I appreciate the attitude and some of the aspects of the layout, I'm somewhat distressed by the relevance. The site is called BigClique and it's available at http://www.bigclique.com .

(I'd change the name. BigClique is going to be hard to spread by word of mouth, unless the domain name BigClick.com is also registered -- but I see BigClick.com looks to be a parked domain. Maybe BigCleek.com could be registered, just to help catch misspellings?)

The site has a simple keyword search on the front page; I do not see a link to search help or to an advanced search panel. (There are links to search interfaces in other languages.) This may be it. I did a search for Cleveland. I was bemused by the search results (more about that momentarily) but I will say this: you will never mistake the ads on BigClique for anything but ads. They are extremely clearly-delineated above, to the side, and below the search results. Now, onto the results themselves...

When you do a Google search for Cleveland, the first site in the results is Cleveland.com, followed by a Web site from the state of Ohio, etc. When you search BigClique for Cleveland the first result you get is for the Cleveland Caviliers. Relevant, yes, but -- ? BigClique DID give as its third result the Cleveland version of Craigslist, which is a good one to be on the results lists. But a lot of the results felt a little off relevancy-wise. A search for "New York" gave the first result as New York Roommates, with the state of New York's page being the fourth result. Google, as a comparison, has The New York Times as its first result. (Come to think of it I don't like that either...)

Search results include title, summary, and URL. Some pages are cached; some pages have preview screenshots to the left of their listings (maybe between 20% and 30% of the search results I looked at had page previews.) There were no page sizes and no dates, unfortunately.

BigClique's slogan appears to be "Just Search... Nothing Else!" That being the case I would add a help file for the search (or highlight it a little, if they do have it and I just missed it) and possibly an advanced search, as well as give a page-one indication of how large their index is. I would also tweak the relevancy a bit.

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