Recently some revival movements on British search market were noticable. Firstly re-bulding of Uk.SearchWebMe (it’s sort of horizontal service now) and secondly promotion action of Wabbadabba. Comparing this search engines we can notice two completetly different strategies of gaining new users.

Wabbadabba is a search engine that presents brand new approach to its users, as we can read at theis FAQ:

“if we make money from people like you using a search engine, surely you deserve something in return”.

Wabbadabba users can win Amazon vouchers of £5-15 and once a time plasma TV for £6500, so it’s worth zour consideration:) We can win the prizes by the frequency of using the search engine, but the number of bargains is reduced to three in a month (per household).We can also win by inviting friends to use Wabbadabba, so it contains some social web elements. Search Engine itself gives us a chance to limit search results to UK sites and UK residents should appreciate using it.

On contrary Uk.SearchWebMe provides its users much more than search results. At home page we can find news, weather forecast and an e-mail, which we can sign up for. Algorhytms of both engines are different, they provide different top search results, but of similar quality.

Maybe marketing strategy of gaining more users by giving small gifts to most active ones is a good idea in G-gle dominated world. Similar solution was implemented by Click4carbon - but they use the Google algorhtym and do not give the gifts, but donate the forestation.

-mw