PreFound Builds on Its Successful Community-Based Search Engine

March 20, 2007; 07:24 AM
PreFound (http://www.prefound.com), a pioneering community-oriented search engine, today announced a new version of the company’s Web site that features a variety of new enhancements, such as enhanced site personalization, more diverse search results, an easier method for adding content, and a new user interface. The changes significantly enhance PreFound’s alternative to traditional computer algorithm-based search results that aim to deliver more relevant results that are based on the previous searches that people have done and the sites they have found useful.

“People are awash in a sea of information. Traditional algorithmic search engines do a good job of surfacing information, but not helping people find the relevant information they are looking for,” said Karl Wong, Principal of Lumineer Communications, a Santa Clara-based market research firm. “PreFound has developed an innovative approach to solving this. It provides a unique way to meld the best of traditional search while leveraging the growing trend of user-contributed, information sharing social communities. This combination allows users to leverage the previous searches of others, thus providing more relevant information faster.”

As a part of the new interface changes, PreFound has added an enhanced method for personalizing and more finely narrowing search results. Building on the company’s Social Search Equalizer, PreFound has added the ability for users to quickly adjust specific interest areas that help to deliver the most targeted search results. The criteria are easily changed for each search. For example, users can set preferences for each search so that a search on “rock” can be targeted to deliver results for any one of the following: mineral rocks, rock and roll music, diamonds, the comedian Chris Rock, the pro wrestler The Rock, rock candy, any of the many cities and municipalities named Rock, the 1996 movie The Rock, etc. While traditional computer-algorithmic search results would return all of these results, many of which are irrelevant to the user, PreFound allows users to set the criteria upfront and deliver better search results. The criteria are easily accessed and adjusted for each search query by clicking on “include your interests.” The new search personalization tool also enables users to enter their city and state to get localized results directly from "Google Local" with maps.

Also included in the new version of the PreFound site is a new search results page that adds to PreFound’s unique user shared search results by including Google search results as well as a Wikipedia reference result for the search topic. This aggregation of three different types of search results makes PreFound a convenient and comprehensive tool for Web searching. Users accustomed to Google searches will still be able to get the same results they always get through Google, but now will also have the opportunity to see the potential of the user shared results of PreFound.

PreFound has also added a new and convenient method for users to share links from previous successful searches with the other users of PreFound. The new “bookmarklet” can be easily added to a Web browser’s “favorites” list and allows users to quickly submit the Web page they are on to a PreFound group by simply clicking on the bookmarklet from their favorites menu. This method, offers the easiest, fastest and least invasive methodology for adding sites to PreFound whether the user is creating a new group or adding the link to an existing group. In adding to the new bookmarklet feature, users also have the other three existing options for submitting sites: 1) posting links directly to PreFound by typing or cut-and-pasting URLs; 2) importing URLs from other sites, such as social bookmarking sites, or; 3) using the PFfinder Toolkit.

Additional enhancements to the PreFound Web site announced today include a new process for quick, one-click rating of groups to ensure that the most popular groups within a category are displayed first, and a new PreFound logo and look and feel for the site.

PreFound is based on the premise that communities of knowledgeable, interested people can identify relevant sites with greater precision than traditional computer algorithm-based search engines. PreFound’s user-contributed Web community allows anyone to search and find Web results based on what other people have previously found to be the most useful and relevant information on any topic. The site is supported by users who submit and organize Web links in specific content areas in order to share this information with others. PreFound offers a human-based alternative to traditional algorithmic and/or page rank search engines by catalyzing the collective wisdom of people interested in sharing great search results with others. This saves everyone the time of searching through the mass of irrelevant search results regularly delivered by traditional search engines. With hundreds of new search term “Groups” containing thousands of links being added every day, PreFound is creating a new form of search that delivers more relevant results.”

“While millions of people every day spend considerable time sifting through search results to separate the wheat from the chaff, this work is forever lost after each search,” said Steve Mansfield, co-founder and CEO of PreFound. “The timing to offer a community-based approach could not be better with the current groundswell of interest amongst Internet users in actively contributing to Internet content, influencing the way this information is viewed and sharing information with others. Users are now pushing for more power to participate in the collaborative ways that the Internet can enable.”

About PreFound

PreFound is a community-oriented search engine that helps people find exactly the information they are looking for by leveraging the collective wisdom of others and the searches/work that they have already done. PreFound features patented technology that enables its members ("Finders") to tag and organize information they find on the Internet and share this information with others. PreFound offers a human-based alternative to computer-based algorithmic search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, that, by some estimates, return inadequate results for more than 40% of searches. For more information visit http://www.prefound.com.