From Wendy Boswell,
Your Guide to Web Search.
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What is BigClique?

BigClique.com is a general search engine tool that is crawler-based; that is, it sends out spiders to crawl sites and catalog them in its index (BigClique's spider is affectionately called "Daisy.") More information about BigClique from URLwire:

"To compete with established players like Google, Yahoo, and MSN, BigClique debuts with an index of a several million web sites, and a proprietary ranking algorithm that analyzes on-site and off-site criteria including page text, tags, inbound links, and other factors. BigClique.com also utilizes a "Segments" technology which offers endless scalability, running on a cluster of Dell Dual Xeon servers." They're relative youngsters to the search engine market, having only been around since the spring of 2003.

BigClique Home Page

You get your choice of what language to search in right off the bat. The home page is simple, with the search query box right in the middle. I had some design issues however. There's a small black bar/line at the top that had some important information in it; but it's hard to read (at least it was in Firefox.). The BigClique logo is kind of unique with the animated magnifying glass. On the home page, you've got what I've already detailed (search bar, different languages), and then there's textual links going to various company information sites, a link inviting you to bookmark the search engine, and yet another link asking you to "click here and make us your search engine default homepage." Yes, they're eager to have you use them!

Searching with BigClique

I entered the query search engine, and I have to say that I was not impressed with the results that came back. The only results that actually WERE search engines in my query were for Adult search engines and an HIV/AIDS Directory on the front page. I tried the second page and got more of the same kind of results - lots of blogs, lots of search engine optimization sites, but not really any search engines themselves. Now, I'm not criticizing BigClique, because these search results actually were pretty interesting for the most part. I was able to see things come back that I wouldn't have otherwise in other more well-known engines. So, bottom line, I think that for a relatively brand new search engine, it's got some interesting results, but it needs to work a bit more on the relevancy to search queries.

More on the search. My search page looked pretty cool - BigClique returns screenshots (where it can) of sites in your results. At the top of the page was the search bar with the BigClique logo next to it. If you, for some reason, decide you want to go back to the BigClique home page, you get to click the Back button in your browser window. The logo is not linked to the home page, a pretty glaring omission. Again, I'm chalking that up to the fact that they're just getting started.

Right under the search bar are the "BigCliques" - sponsored ads. On the side bar, you have Side Cliques - more sponsored ads. And then at the bottom of the search page you have Down Low Cliques - yep, sponsored ads. There's a lot of them. You can get more information about BigClique's sponsored ad program on their paid listings page.

Underneath the BigCliques, there are the top news results returned for your particular query. I had 2612 results returned for "search engine." Again, to get back to my original search results page I had to wear out the Back button in my browser. This is a usability issue that needs to be addressed.

BigClique Features

The BigClique Toolbar takes a new approach to sponsored listings. More from BigClique:

"Your brand will be shown to all BigClique Toolbar users and this is an excellent way to keep your brand in the minds of our users. When your listing is clicked the user will be transported to the URL you designate. Each listing is shown and rotated to users for 3 minutes at a time throughout the length of your campaign." A lot of well-known companies are choosing to use this, including Sean John, Def Jam Records, and Cadillac. And the fees aren't bad considering how many people will possibly be seeing your brand name.

As far as features...there's not much to offer right now, other than the pure search. I didn't see any user options, not even adult content filtering, and in any search I ran there seemed to be a pretty good amount of adult content. I'm not bothered by that, but since more and more kids are becoming Internet-savvy, this needs to be something on the BigClique to-do list.

Why Should I Use BigClique?

I think that BigClique has some issues it needs to address - filtering, relevancy, user options, etc.- but I think that they have a lot of potential, and after all, they're still in beta. I'm going to keep my eye on this newbie search engine.