The Daily News is reporting about a new search engine, Cranky.com, whose goal is to be the search engine for the over-50 crowd (luckily, I don’t need it yet). The developers of this search engine state that it is a specialty search engine designed to please aging baby boomers by processing every request from the perspective of someone who is at least 50 years old. I’m not quite sure what that means; they think it means showing just four Web sites in the nonadvertising section of each results page and making the sparser listings more relevant to its target audience. How do they do this? After teaming up with Internet research firm Compete Inc. to identify the 500,000 most popular Web sites among people at least 45 years old, Cranky dispatched reviewers to dig even deeper into the top 5,000 destinations. The reviewers then wrote descriptions about the content and tried to ensure the index contained more direct links to the most meaningful information.
What I find more interesting, however, is the top 10 searches that the engine displayed when I visited it:
| 1. brain builders 2. jobs after retirement 3. work from home 4. body mass index 5. make new friends |
6. elderhostel 7. blogs 8. reiki 9. stephen king 10. sex |
Yup, the over-50 crowd :-). Of course, one might expect #10 to be higher, but then again….
I also heard a rumor that the company that built Cranky was thinking about building a search engine specifically for the under-30 crowd. They are doing this so that folks will trust the results.
Those of you out there not suffering from CRS (Can’t Remember S***) should recall that this is National Delurking Week. This week is designed for all ages, you don’t have to be over 18 to participate. If you’re reading this blog, I encourage you to comment. Remember, if you don’t leave a comment, you’re letting the folks at AARP win.
