Design, Coding, SEO and Social Media Marketing, WordPress & Facebook

Leapfish, a new search engine aggregator still in beta, called HyperArts the other day, selling ad space similar to Google Adwords. They have, however, come up with a unique take on the concept of search engine advertising. They sell a string of keywords, but instead of paying per click, the advertiser buys ad space for those keywords permanently. Only three advertisements appear on each results page, and the top spot is sold for more than the second and third. Like buying real estate, or stock in the company, you are investing in that location, one of only three ads at the top and bottom of each search results page. The idea was intriguing, not enough to buy the ad space (since we do so well in Google’s organic results already , but enough to make me curious to explore Leapfish and their site a bit more thoroughly.

On the Leapfish homepage searchers are greeted with all sorts of information: recent AP news stories, stock market updates, daily tips from wikiHow, local weather, and videos from YouTube. In the actual search area you can choose which engine you want to use: Google, Yahoo or MSN. Searchers are prompted by an encouraging reminder “It’s ok, you’re not cheating on Google” and as each word, nay, each letter, is entered into the search bar results rapidly appear beneath. By the time I had typed in my first name, there were already results, although not specific enough, but once I had completed my last name there were pictures of me on the right, links to my Twitter account and Facebook and various other websites. You don’t even have to click “enter”, what a time saver! At the bottom, beneath the regular web results is a section specifically for blog results. On other searches there are additional results sections, like shopping, news and videos. I was skeptical of this search engine at first, but seeing every aspect of online information sources represented made me start to doubt my undying and absolute faith in Google…

I have been thinking about search aggregators lately, wondering if someone has come up with a social media search engine yet. I imagine an engine that provides results from Facebook, Twitter, Technorati, YouTube and more. It would be an easy way to monitor conversations, follow recent trending topics and find contacts across various social networks. Leapfish works with the same idea, bringing you results from all forms of online media. Now that we have so many networks to keep track of, there should be a way to sift through all of that information from one place.

Judging by the comments on this blog post, Leapfish is calling everyone...

Find another review of Leapfish here.

Check out the Leapfish blog.