As I refuse to use the official Telegram chat as we have this “Community”, below is my reply to Tim Enneking’s request for community reaction…
"Getting paid to search was originally (six years ago) a major (if not the major USP) of the project.
I have been thinking about what they are today and came up with the following 5 USPs. I’d like the community’s reaction, please.
- Excellent, customizable meta search engine
- Privacy
- Decentralized
- AI
- Paid to search (within limits)
in descending order of importance".
(as placed in the Presearch Community Telegram chat group on August 17, 2023)
Now, with respect to the “order of importance”…
Ad 1)
In the ideal scenario… Presearch will be the…
Best customizable (decentralized and community-driven) Meta search Portal (including an “unbiased” search engine) in the market respecting users’ Privacy.
(and by using smart AI technologies for better search results, and by rewarding active users with PRE tokens)… but…
that’s the ideal situation… and we all know that we are not there yet…
So, we can’t (yet) mention/use the first USP “Excellent, customizable meta search engine” as clearly we are not excellent or better in comparison to DDG (privacy search engine) or Google because the current Presearch platform is still “missing” many features and benefits that other search engines already have…
For example, we lack these (Google) features:
- People Also Ask
- People Also Search (just a very small number of terms in the summary Tab on the right side while Google adds many more in the search results)
- Filters (Maps, Books, Flights, Finance, Charts) and extra keyword phrases
- Top Stories (More News)
- Autocomplete
- Settings (number of search results per page, “one” language result (not based on user’s location), and many others)
- Personalization (Google knows everything about your search behavior and can give personal optimized organic results and ads).
- Keyword ads. You may find more keyword ads annoying, but due to heavy competition, the “quality” and “relevance” of Google ads are better in comparison to Presearch.
- Google has its own “indexing”… Presearch is just “mimicking” the Google search algorithms (and it will take “years” to come up with our own “better and unbiased” algorithm).
And I can continue…
Especially, the first 5 items will lead by definition to more additional searches by the same user…
So, if possible, these features should be included in the roadmap.
So, at the moment, we can’t compete with Google with respect to user search features/benefits… and only “beat” them with respect to Privacy and the Meta, i.e. “Portal” feature with access to 100+ different search platforms.
Hence, yes it should be the “internal” focus point #1 to try to become the “best” search engine, but by far, it’s not a USP at the moment.
So, as “we” are not the best search engine yet, this USP should be changed into the aspects where we are “leading”…
- the CUSTOMIZABLE META portal feature (100+ search platforms)… the one-stop place for all your searches.
And with customizable, I do expect more than just having the feature to set “search platform icons”, but to make it a fully-customizable portal with preferred layouts, placements, and “own” images/banners instead of icons, etc. Just think about how you would like to set up your own “portal”.
Not just for “free” available public search platforms but also for “paid” sources. Think about (financial) news, medical, encyclopedia, and all sources to which a user has to pay for access… but via the Presearch platform will see a summary description, and get access to the (“full”) results by paying a small transaction fee in PRE.
Under “customizable” I also mean features to “block” ads (by staking or paying a fee in PRE) or to tailor-made the results (lay-out) settings.
Of course, “Community search engines” and the “Search API” are unique USPs for selling to “communities” and groups of users, and should be as “customizable” as possible as well.
Ad 2 Privacy
I think we all agree that this is a very important USP.
However, by using this statement (inside the last email):
“Our stand on data privacy; we value you hence we do not collect your private data and never will.”
The team is restricting itself to “never” collect any private data.
But for the “best” search “experience”, as a user, you want search results based on your own “personal and private” preferences.
You know, it can be rather annoying to see “irrelevant” search results (and ads) over and over again when you search for the same “search query”.
If you compare this with Google… they know more about you than yourself… hence, you will see search results based on your prior search behavior and known “personal” data… giving you more personalized and tailor-made search and ad results.
I’m not saying that we should skip this Privacy USP… but there are many (potential) Presearch platform users who want a more “personalized” search experience by sharing some “data” with the platform.
If I was the CEO, I would not restrict myself for now and in the future… I would keep the possibility open that users can select “Privacy Levels” and decide what personal data to share or not with the platform (and/or advertisers).
Advertisers do want to know more about a user… to give them better “personalized” ads to increase conversations.
Advertisers are willing to pay more (per click or view) if their ads are shown to better “targeted” audiences.
Why restrict yourself with respect to monetization?
A platform with just “cheap and general” (banner) ads can be very annoying as we have seen so far with the casino/betting ads…
If you don’t know anything about your audience (only the IP address and search phrase)… how can you attract advertisers who want to target specific audiences and are willing to pay higher CPC/CPV?
Also, by this stringent restriction to not collect any data, it would be harder to “sell” the “Community Search Engines” as maybe these communities do want to know more about their user base, and do want them to show “relevant” search results and ads.
Finally, I think it will be hard to give “staking” rewards in the future to “unknown” users (who didn’t pass KYC/AML procedures) as many countries/authorities will require “crypto token platforms” to acquire user data for taxation reasons (as for example, the IRS requires). And in that case, it would be an “easy question” to ask these users if their data may be used for better personalization (and optionally in compensation for higher rewards).
Ad 3 Decentralization
First, Tim doesn’t mention the prior USP “Community-driven” (and related slogan “Presearch for WE the people”).
Maybe he classifies this under “Decentralized” as decentralization can involve many aspects such as:
- decentralized “network” architecture (nodes) for roles such as crawling, indexing, storage, and posting search (AI) results.
- decentralized governance (DAO + Foundation) with community voting and dynamic roadmap based on “real” community input.
- decentralized ownership based upon community activity by getting PRE tokens for “activities” as searches, running nodes, review (and indexing) search results and ads.
- Blockchain, sidechains, and interoperability (Web3) and the “utility” and “staking” roles of the PRE token.
- decentralized content (search results) created by community members (such as community packages, but also search “reviews”, i.e. rating of content)
I hope that Tim means all these forms of decentralization…
I understand that the USPs relate to “reasons” why a user should use the Presearch platform, and that “token-holders-related aspects” such as governance, community-driven, blockchain, and PRE token are not the first reason why someone should use the search platform… but it’s all about know, like, and trust before someone would use/buy a product/service…
or to say it in one other word…
I’m missing the “sympathy” or “David vs Goliath” aspect… the “community-driven project” (We the People) vs Big-Tech (who earn billions of dollars by “selling” user data and where “freemium” users won’t get any rewards in comparison to Presearch were people do earn “something” while protecting privacy).
I’m also missing the “customer” feedback feature (“we listen to our community”) where users can come up with new feature request features and community-created or “reviewed” content… this is a form of community-driven USP.
So, especially, for me, the DAO governance structure and community-driven aspects (with anti-Big-Tech positioning) are very important (and should be mentioned under the USPs), and it should be clear for all users (and token holders) what this “true” decentralization involves.
Ad 4 AI
I think we all agree that AI becomes more and more important and if used properly can be the “distinctive” USP… but for now, it’s just in the “test” case, and it will only be a real USP if the roadmap items will be properly executed, and we “beat” competition.
Ad 5 Paid to search
As we haven’t yet achieved the #1 goal, it probably wasn’t the right moment to “kill” the search rewards for regular users from 0.1 PRE to 0.01 PRE…
as many users used the Presearch platform as they were “compensated” with some PRE rewards for using “our” search engine with fewer features/benefits as the “market leader”.
Anyway, I don’t want to start that discussion again… but I do expect thousands of current regular users to leave the platform (with many complaints on social media)…
Just do the math…
A regular user who does 5 searches a day will get 0.05 PRE per day. To achieve the 1,000 PRE threshold, it will take 20,000 days. That’s almost 55 years!
Even if a user already has 800 PRE earned so far, it will take him 11 years to finally reach the 1,000 threshold. (Hence, this feels like “stealing”)
Well, that’s the same as stopping (or a better name killing) this search reward system completely.
So, no wonder that these users are frustrated to see that their “earned” PRE rewards (via searches and affiliate referrals) are “useless” as it will take them so many years to achieve the threshold of 1,000 PRE, and just don’t see sufficient reasons to use the Presearch platform anymore.
So far, today, the first day of the reward “cut-down”, the number of daily searches of 2.5M is at an absolute low… coincidence?
So, as a new team, you may think that search rewards should be #5 in the USP ordering… users may think differently as all the other USPs are not (yet) sufficient (being life as aimed) to use Presearch above other search engines.
But actually, it’s not a USP anymore as the rewards are so ridiculously low that it’s better to stop this program and don’t ever mention/treat it as USP for a regular user (the new search staking rewards feature is a “unique utility” for token holders).