Will search engine users ever pay a user fee to use a search engine?

May 10, 2013 6:09 AM

I've been presented with a business idea for a search engine or Web application that would require the user of the search engine to a pay a fee for the search results. Intuitively, I don't think this could work, but I'm having a hard time actually saying why. Historically, I think most search engines have been funded through advertisements or marketers who purchase profile data on searchers. Is there anything I could point to, such as a case study or an article in a journal or magazine, that would explain why a business model based on getting somebody to pay for the results for a search engine will or won't work?
posted by jonp72 to Computers & Internet (27 answers total)

Is the search engine pointing to some sort of specialized information, like academic articles, that Google would not be able to find?
posted by Lieber Frau at 6:14 AM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

"Historically," search engines were entirely free, and they still feel free to users, even though ads and sponsored links appear on top or in a side bar. A tangible charge thus feels like a definite inconvenience. I think that Lieber Frau may be onto something in that specialized search (especially tied to specialized databases -- I'm thinking Lexus-Nexus here) might be a different thing, where something like a subscription service would do. But when I can just use a different search engine, you're setting a mighty high threshold by charging for individual searches.
posted by acm at 6:31 AM on May 10, 2013

There are paid/subscription databases that the user pays for because the information can only be found in that database (like LExisNexis or academic/journal articles). Generally though, even searching those databases is free; the results are behind a paywall with just enough info to sound interesting - that is the enticement. As well, usually it is information businesses or institutions would be willing to write off as a business expense. The only incentive I can think of for someone to pay for search results of a general web search is to prevent the data mining of their information search patterns. But generally someone THAT concerned about their digital trail is well-versed in proxies and free services.

Once people are used to a free service they have a hard time paying for it again unless the free service has ended or there is value added in some way (like efficiently or accuracy). I am thinking of things like limewire and napster that were great until fake songs started appearing; now I often pay for my music via itunes because I can't be bothered to search and listen to tonnes of files for the sake of saving a dollar when it is just one search and click away from downloading. What value-added service would a paid search offer?
posted by saucysault at 6:34 AM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

jonp72: "I've been presented with a business idea for a search engine or Web application that would require the user of the search engine to a pay a fee for the search results."

Whomever is presenting this idea to you should be on the hook for explaining why this is a viable business. The only cases, in my mind, where this would work would be:

- Your search algorithm is better than Google (so, so doubtful)
- You have access to data that Google doesn't (there are plenty of businesses out there that do this for specific industry verticals)
posted by mkultra at 6:38 AM on May 10, 2013 [5 favorites]

There are professionals that do offer web searching as a job (either paid as freelancers or gov't employees at a library) but their value added service is accuracy. They use a reference interview to drill down what the client/member needs before they even input anything into the search engine. An automated reference interview cannot be as accurate because there is so much going on in proper reference interview - beyond looking for synonyms for what the client is looking for there is creating an atmosphere of trust and confidence, looking for non-verbalised clues, a willingness to keep asking "is this what you want or is there still a perfect answer out there we can search for?", being aware of the zeitgeist, awareness of current topics as well as historically popular topics of questions. Very few people are able to start their web search with what they really need - instead they tend to look for what information they "know" is out there using the terms they are familiar with that is close to what they think they want.
posted by saucysault at 6:45 AM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

"Intuitively," people won't pay for a service if they can effortlessly get a variety of equivalent services that are free. Basically the whole "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" burden is on Ideas Guy.

If this search engine is for information that isn't publicly searchable, that would justify a usage fee. If the search engine is in some way dramatically better than existing free search engines, that also might justify a usage fee although it's a lot harder to make that case, since there are (for example) search engines that dramatically improve precision and recall and are domain-specific, and they are free to search.

Now, maybe this search engine is worth paying for regardless of what else is out there for free. I paid my $5 to join MeFi, we're told that the $5 fee keeps out the unwashed masses and on current evidence that claim is justified. I lurked for a while before joining, so I'd already had plenty of opportunity to be convinced.

So if someone else wanted to start an online community and charge $5 to join, they could cite MetaFilter as an example of a successful community that charges a fee. If Ideas Guy can cite examples of successful search engines that charge a fee to search, then maybe he's got a point. If there are no equivalent search engines out there that charge a fee to search, it's up to Ideas Guy to demonstrate why he's got a leg to stand on.
posted by tel3path at 7:18 AM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Because searching has always been free and there will always be free alternatives (GOOGLE!) that people will use. If people don't like ads, they can download Ad Block Plus instead of paying money. Unless the search engine is searching information that is not available elsewhere (think LexisNexis, or NewsLibrary, which searches news archives and public records) then no one is paying for it. You've been presented with a horrible idea.
posted by AppleTurnover at 7:32 AM on May 10, 2013

Let's assume there was no Google, no Bing, no search engines period. And let's assume that your contacts proposed search algorithm was just as good as all of those systems and no one ever tried to scam it (and while we're at it, something likely, like we all get a magic talking unicorns!)

How often have you looked for specific information and come up with not what you wanted again and again and again. How would you feel if you were paying for each of those for-crap results? How long before somebody's magic talking unicorn came up with a search engine that did make people feel like they were being screwed by charging for all these false hits, and instead chose to make their money off of advertisement or something?
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 7:49 AM on May 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

Plain and simple: as long as there are all of these free alternatives, no, people will not pay to use it. Unless (and this should be read with a huge IF), your search provides results that they absolutely cannot get from the free search engines. Very doubtful that would be the case.
posted by Eicats at 8:20 AM on May 10, 2013

As a counterpoint, there are a number of websites that make money just doing public record searches.
posted by Garm at 8:29 AM on May 10, 2013

What is the barrier to your customer finding this information elsewhere? How does the fee compare to the cost (in money, time, effort, etc) of the user getting the information another way? How much does the user need or want this information?

I pay for WSJ, I do not pay for NYT. I pay for Westlaw, I would not pay for Google.
My grandma might pay for AOL search if there was something she wanted to find that she was aware she could find on the internets, because she isn't aware of all of the other ways she could get the info for free with very little additional effort.
My dad would probably pay for something that saved him 2 minutes of time or thought, but it had damn well better get it right and right the first time.

If this person cannot give you a description of the target user and a justification for a pricing system, you should not be putting money into this idea yet.
posted by KAS at 8:46 AM on May 10, 2013

Also, what's the barrier to entry for other businesses that might jump in to do the same thing? If it's low barrier to entry, why do you see your business succeeding?
posted by KAS at 8:48 AM on May 10, 2013

Why is this particular service worth $X to its users? Is it saving time versus the market leader? Is it helping people to make more money at their chosen professions? How much? It needs to be quantifiable. People don't pay for services "just because". You have to be able to make a business case for why your target market will pay the price you're asking for the service you're providing. Not just "why wouldn't they".

Even the classical examples of this, like Westlaw and Lexis, are currently facing severe downward price pressures as their corpus has become increasingly available on the open internet. But there are whole companies that exist just to do market research on whether people would pay $4 for a particular brand of drugstore face cream and whatever, this is not something you just have to guess at. Or them, if someone is proposing this to you as an investor or whatever. The fact that people don't pay for ordinary search engines now does not mean they never would--it all depends on the actual product. Like everything in the economy, the price of the competition will have an impact, but it's not the only determining factor.

That said, if somebody wanted to start up a new store that was just like Walmart only cost massively more than going to Walmart, well, you'd laugh at them. If they didn't preface this with how this idea blows the existing options out of the water, this isn't a proposal to be taken seriously.
posted by Sequence at 9:03 AM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

This might be an indirect path for finding what you want: search for applications or website plugins that are built on top of Google's Custom Search Engine API. Until recently, I was using that API via a WordPress plugin so I could get Google's search results on the site without using iframes or anything like that. Google's API gives 1000 searches a day free and then charges something like $5 per 1000 after that. So, since it's explicitly a pay-to-search model, you might find folks using that API for their software and see if they have the info you want.
posted by Mo Nickels at 9:36 AM on May 10, 2013

Obviously I don't know how this would work in practice, but I can imagine something like this being a customer service nightmare. Like, what if people pay, then find the search results are not what they wanted, or were not as advertised?

Example: I recently paid a background check company for additional contact info I couldn't find in public records. The company sent me the info, and 100% of it was publicly listed on their site, and there was no phone number, which was promised. I hounded them until they refunded my money. I took up so much of their time at no cost to me (it was work related & on company time), that they finally caved. What is the customer service cost here? If they are going to be one of those companies that ignores this type of inquiry/never gives refunds, would you want to be involved with it?
posted by peep at 10:17 AM on May 10, 2013

Response by poster: Does anybody have any specific examples to point to, such as a case study of somebody who tried to do a fee-based search engine and failed? Or perhaps there's an economic model of why this can't work. I need something concrete.

I wish I could ask the person to come up with a better version of the idea, but for reasons of office politics, I can't.
posted by jonp72 at 10:27 AM on May 10, 2013

In the abstract, there is absolutely no reason that one can't build a viable business by charging for something that people are used to getting for free, or nearly free. (Look at the bottled water industry, or smugmug, or...) There are good reasons why such a thing would be exceedingly difficult in the present day market for general web search engines (if that is indeed what is being proposed here).

The biggest hurdle is probably economic. The amount if money you'd have to spend to build your search engine and its initial index is big. That's before you can even serve your first customer. The cost of keeping the index up to date to serve existing customers and attract new customers is also quite large. Getting enough customers to cover those fixed costs is going to be a challenge, however you generate revenue. And yes, it will not be made any easier by competing against Google and Bing. Rich Skrenta, who started Blekko has done a number of blog posts about the challenges of launching a new search engine. They'd probably be worth reading.

Search is by no means a solved problem. I can think of some ways one might be able to successfully launch a paid search engine, but the odds are still long, the timeframe, years, and well, you'd have to pay for it.
posted by Good Brain at 11:40 AM on May 10, 2013

Well, Bing pays me to search (in the form of gift cards for points accumulated while signed in). For me to reverse that scenario, your non-specialty search engine would have to give me results that were otherwise unfindable by Bing or Google or any other free service, and be available on Saturdays to come to my house and mow my lawn.

Is privacy the selling point? That might have a shot: Pay for search results, and we promise not to data-mine. But proving that might be a hard sell to skeptics.
posted by sageleaf at 12:11 PM on May 10, 2013

Does anybody have any specific examples to point to, such as a case study of somebody who tried to do a fee-based search engine and failed? Or perhaps there's an economic model of why this can't work. I need something concrete.

It's a simple fact of economics. Supply and demand.

As others have mentioned, there is a bounty of free, qualified search engines out there (google, bing and others), and the demand is more than being met by these top search engines. For your business associate, this spells immediate doom unless there is something that so far supersedes google in search results or offers something incredibly unique to raise the bar and deserves payment.

I mean, other free search engines get launched and are crushed by google... dogpile, askjeeves, to name a couple, so why would a paid service fare any better? I believe a specific example is hard to find, because it doesn't exist yet.

Unless your associate has a concrete plan to revolutionize search, launching a paid search service identical or not quite as good as google would be like opening a Taco Bell Express stand right next to a Taco Bell and charging triple the price for the same food... and punching each customer in the face when they walk in.
posted by Debaser626 at 1:58 PM on May 10, 2013

There's no reason this can't work; there are many reasons it probably won't. Businesses that take on giant projects without any kind of evidence for something being a good decision, rather than insisting that someone else has to prove it's bad, go bankrupt very quickly. If it's just in an exploratory stage, I wouldn't worry about Proving Them Wrong Immediately; the idea will prove itself or not once subject to a bit of scrutiny. There's like a 99.9% chance that it's a totally dumb plan, but I personally recall insisting that there was no way Google was going to get anywhere because it was so patently obvious that Yahoo was better. Excite originally refused to buy them for a song. So.

If this is something your company is already planning to invest serious money in, on nothing more than "nobody conclusively proved that it was impossible before we started", that's so much bigger a problem than trying to compete with Google, in practical terms, that I'd be looking for a new job, because you inadvertently ended up working in a Dilbert cartoon. But hopefully that's not it!
posted by Sequence at 2:12 PM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

I pay to search legal materials through westlaw.
posted by J. Wilson at 2:48 PM on May 10, 2013

That's like saying, "Can someone give me a business model of why paid libraries wouldn't work?" There are free public libraries everywhere. To sell a product, you need a unique selling proposition. All you have described is a search engine that is no different from Google. If you aren't giving people something they can't already get for free, what is their incentive to pay?
posted by AppleTurnover at 4:52 PM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

What is the value add proposition? Because if it is not better search results; access to a very specific, exclusive corpus of knowledge or unique, exclusive features such as, concierge services or guaranteed privacy how can your search engine services be preferred?

In those areas listed, you can readily find other search engines, besides Google, trying to provide even better search results including guaranteed privacy e.g., Duck Duck Go. If there is not a particular search engine that makes a paranoid like me happy then you have plug-ins and add-ons that deal with ads and privacy concerns (AdBlockPlus, Ghostery, NoScript, etc.). As noted above, you have LexisNexis, Westlaw, EbscoHost and a range of academic and specific search engines tied to specific bodies of knowledge. As for concierge search and research I point out that Gartner and Forrester Research do that now for a pretty penny of both general industry reports and client requested reports.

There have been plenty of search engines that did not do well, even prior to the world of intimate tracking and ads such as, HotBot, Ask Jeeves, Excite, Yahoo, etc. (I point to the search engines of the 90's prior to the crushing blow of Google)

Search is a crucial item because the onslaught of information is daunting and searching, filtering and curating becomes vital. So vital that the field is competitive and firms will emerge to take advantage of any opportunities opening in those areas. Google is interesting because it has leveraged itself into an actual verb for search and has created an expectation, in the west at least, that search is "free" to the general public. Again, unless you have an exclusive body of knowledge people don't expect to pay.

Not meaning to be a downer, but on the surface I am not getting what distinct advantage your search engine would provide that would cause people to pay unless other factors are involved.

TL;DR I agree with those comments from above.
posted by jadepearl at 6:24 PM on May 10, 2013

If you want an example of a search engine that offers a pay model, there's Spokeo. And the creepily named peekyou. And probably a billion others.

If you're thinking about a generic search engine, it'll never work. If you find a way to specialize in targeted information that can't easily be gotten elsewhere, then sure, there's potential. But you really need to choose a very targeted audience who would be willing to pay for specific information.

I assume Spokeo's target audience is stalkers :)
PeekYou too? ABSOLUTELY.
posted by 2oh1 at 9:11 PM on May 10, 2013

People charge money for otherwise free software that's been reskinned or something. It's not necessarily illegal but it relies on the ignorance of users. It's kind of a self-limiting exercise since if you're not adding any value once your "product" attains any level of popularity the fact that it's a just a ripoff of something free will become more widely known and people will just use the original instead.
posted by onya at 10:01 PM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Northern Light used to offer premium search services, I think for additional libraries, and were, in 2000, a good enough search engine that I used them as well as Google. They seem now to be a specialist search engine provider for vertical markets.
posted by ambrosen at 8:48 AM on May 11, 2013

Since no one seems to be offering research that proves what you rightly suspect, which is that in the era of Google, users expect and will demand free results, try the search term "Google user expectations." There is scholarly research available about this in the area of library and information science.
posted by Lieber Frau at 4:14 PM on May 11, 2013