The Internet is awash with portals and search engines, so what possible need can there be for yet another search engine?

The answer lies in the current trends of the existing search engines in their search for profitability. There are several major negative movements among search engines:

PPC (pay-per-click) engines and 'featured' listings
There has been a huge influx recently of new pay-per-click search engines. While these do have a place in the commercial world, the increasing emphasis on the easy money is bad for low budget and non-commercial sites. It is especially bad for users, since the quality of PPC listings is generally noticeably lower than non-PPC results.

Just about all of the major players, including Yahoo, Google and MSN, now use some form sponsored listings. These usually appear directly above the main search results and are listing positions given to the highest bidder.

This trend shows a total disregard for the quality of the search results; the sponsored listings do not take into account the quality of the sites listed, or the fact that many site owners cannot or will not pay for PPC listings. These leads to a small number of websites dominating the PPC listings, thus dramatically reducing the choice for the user.

Largest possible database
Some of the major engines are still fighting the "who has the largest database" war. The main problem with this is that these massive indexes do not take into account that 80% of the web is just junk. This effectively means that searches turn up all kinds of web junk, mixed in with the relevant results.

Advertising infestations
In the search for profits, the search engines have become little more than commerical advertising mediums. Even Google, which has a reputation for quiet advertising regularly shows up to 10 adverts per results page, including sponsored listings.

Matching phrases not requirements
As search engine ranking technology improves, it becomes easier and easier for the search engines to provide search results to the relevant search phrase. However, this does not mean that the engines are any better at matching what the user is actually looking for.

For example, someone searching for "website promotion" may be looking for software products to help them promote their own website. Or, they might be looking for information and tips on how to promote their site. Alternatively, they may be looking to hire a promotion company to do the work for them. Current search engine technology is incapable of distinguishing between these very different kinds of search, which is why users receive a hotch-potch of results, even on the better engines such as Google.

Although it can be argued that users should learn to phrase their searches better, if the search engines were doing their job properly, this would not be an issue.

Only particular types of site are successful
There is only one type of site that is successful on the search engines; the type that matches the 'ideal' site for search engines. In other words, unless a site is optimised for the engines, it will not receive many visitors.

This means that millions of websites are completely left out of the search engine game. These include all of those sites where the design does not allow for optimisation, or the owners cannot afford or do not understand the optimisation work necessary.

The result is a greatly reduced offering to search engine users, and punishes those site owners who do not understand what the supposed ideal website in the eyes of the engines is.

While the directories, such as Yahoo and the OPen Directory do provide a solution to this issue, they bring with them a new set of problems.

Prohibitively expensive submissions
Yahoo and Looksmart both now charge a fee of $299 for submission. Inktomi charges US$ 375 for 25 pages included within their database for 1 year. Altavista charges US$ 1080 for 25 pages included within their database for 1 year.

It is now becoming prohibitively expensive for small businesses and non-commercial sites to submit their websites to the search engines, leading to further reduced coverage in the search engines and directories.

While there can be no argument against these services charging a fee (they are businesses after all), in many cases it is not proportionate either to the returns or the effort of the editors in listing a site.