Transparent Search Engine Shows Its Earnings

from the me-too-with-a-twist dept

Though newcomers to the search engine market grab a lot of attention, there's at least one study that reports hype doesn't translate to use by a mass audience. But more hype doesn't hurt, so the overhyped Snap search engine is getting even more attention from its policy of making its financial data public. According to its publicly-available stats, Snap recently had a day that produced 624 clicks on ads which generated $55.88 (about $0.09/click). That doesn't sound too far out of line with what an average AdSense publisher might make, but unlike an AdSense publisher, Snap is not only "allowed" to make its revenue public, but it wants to do so. Obviously, this gimmick is meant to needle Google a bit for its secrecy (despite its "don't be evil" motto), but the data is actually interesting and has clear analogies to other pay-per-click search engines. Though now that Snap has taken this transparency step, maybe it should open up its search algorithms as well. If Snap grows to become a significant search engine contender, the company could be waiting to drop that bomb on the other search engines -- since unveiling transparent search algorithms might allow Snap to legitimately provide search engine optimization (SEO) services, too. That would be something the other search engines couldn't quite match without being criticized for conflict of interest.

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