Show HN: Solve for All – customizable, private, hackable search engine

Show HN: Solve for All – customizable, private, hackable search engine(solveforall.com)

7 points by solveforall 10 years ago | 5 comments

The reason to use this is really buried in the text: "if you want to use domain-specific engines, want more control over your search results...". I don't know that I do. I might do but it seems like an intermediate goal. Ultimately I think your value prop is more basic i.e. you believe you give better search results and these are just the mechanisms to achieve that. To sell that, you need to give me examples of bad search results and show your better ones. Even one or two examples would be enough to get your site registered in my "try after google" list.

What would help me is e.g.:

    1. Split the landing page into two side by side gifs
    2. lhs column showing a series of google searches & results
    3. rhs column showing the same searches but with your results
    4. Have a demo search box, above the fold, I can try without setting up social accounts. Its too much of a hurdle without knowing the value.
    5. I'm not watching a 10 minute video without already understanding and being sold on an idea
    6. I would consider dropping the security angle from the hero - it makes the already tricky to see value prop more unfocused.

Is there a niche where your results are particularly strong compared to Google e.g. politics, products, tech support etc.? It might make it easier to position yourself by pushing just that rather than as a head to head google competitor.

Best of luck!

p.s. I really dislike the font used for the logotype - bad fit for the site and makes it feel amateurish.

solveforall 10 years ago | |

Really helpful feedback, thanks! It is true that the focus is on niches, like programming, deals, and politics. I'll be working to incorporate your feedback.

About the font, I think my taste in fonts is pretty much opposite of everyone else's. I wanted to do something more "stylish", but I guess I'll switch to something more professional. If you happen to have a suggestion, or just general guidelines, I'd love to hear it.

I assume your "try after google" list is figurative, not a real list on the web?

Thanks again!

solveforall 10 years ago |

Hi, I'm the developer of Solve for All. I'm hoping to get feedback on this project, which I promise to consider carefully. I'm also hoping to get in contact with anyone interested in working together, sponsoring the site (which is ad-free), or any other reason.

A few caveats about the site: 1) I've made the settings a little less private for the sake of this Show HN. I don't share your search history with anyone, but with the current defaults, you'll be downloading images directly from the sites in your search results and feeds, possibly over HTTP. When I finally have a 1.0, I plan on securing all downloads for subscribers. 2) Sorry about the captcha when you create an account. Almost always the captcha is impossible when you first load it, so you have to hit the blue refresh button. I couldn't find a good solution that didn't require loading a 3rd party script (Google noCaptcha seems to work beautifully, but I'm wary of including their script). For now I'm using a locally downloaded copy of the reCaptcha script. 3) I'm not wedded to the name, logo, or the theme. Feel free to criticize any aspect of the site, I can take it! 4) I'm specifically looking for feedback on how to make this open source, but still making this a sustainable business. I am thinking of AGPL, or possibly something that would prohibit commercial usage without a license.

Thank you for any input you have!

kenrick95 10 years ago |

Thanks for the submission. There are few thoughts from me: - I wonder what does it mean by "customizable", i.e. how is this different from DuckDuckGo with its duck.co? - I think that the UI can be much better, a good UI does not necessarily to have shiny elements (shadows, gradients, etc). Good UI shall be consistent (in layout, colors, look-and-feel) and intuitive (assume you are a new user, by only looking, one should know what to do next). Maybe read some tips from http://goodui.org/ - Why I should register for an account? Reasons are not that clear. - When I see the signup page, I was amazed that you implemented such many external account linkage. Maybe you can you consistent image sizes or even just text without image. - When I navigate to the home page, it's not pretty clear what I should do: login? signup? "learn more"? or navigate via the navbar? In summary, I had mostly UI issues, I was once like this, did not care anything about UI, but later I realized that UI, even with a super powerful back-end, is still a very important part of web development since it is what faces the user, and it is what made the user feel. Good luck and have fun :)

solveforall 10 years ago | |

Thanks for the feedback and the link! To answer your questions: 1) "I wonder what does it mean by "customizable"" You can add different plugins (that produce answers) and control when to activate them. You can also create mini-search engines that search specific domains. There are also a few settings about security that you can tweak. 2) "how is this different from DuckDuckGo with its duck.co" This search engine also includes a feed reader and get results from your feeds when you search. Also, the plugin system allows you to add data and plugins (written in 100% Javascript) instantly without anyone's approval. 3) "Why I should register for an account?" Since this includes a feed reader, you need to create an account to save your chosen feeds. Also by creating an account you can create your own mini-search engines and add plugins other than the default.

Since you've asked these questions, it's clear to me that I haven't done a good job explaining these things on my site. I'll be working on improving this. Thanks a lot for the feedback!

1. Split the landing page into two side by side gifs 2. lhs column showing a series of google searches & results 3. rhs column showing the same searches but with your results 4. Have a demo search box, above the fold, I can try without setting up social accounts. Its too much of a hurdle without knowing the value. 5. I'm not watching a 10 minute video without already understanding and being sold on an idea 6. I would consider dropping the security angle from the hero - it makes the already tricky to see value prop more unfocused.