The next google? or the next dot bomb?

The BumbleBee Garage Web 2.0 Automotive Search Engine Project
Yes, that is right, it is another garage based WEB 2.0 Startup.

The BumbleBee Garage Automotive Search Engine Project is yes, you have heard it all before, the next big 2.0 internet sensation. Conviently named for the space our "Corporate Offices" are located in. Yes, that is correct, my garage.

I know I am not google and I don't have a PHD from Stanford, but those guys did if from their garage. I have a garage, so why not me?

Low overhead, cheap bandwidth and the constant aroma of gasoline fumes eminating from my lawn mower which is sitting next to a 42U HP rackmount server cabinet. What more could you ask for? The space is cheap and I can network a room full of walmart computers on a cheap router I bought at Comp USA.

I am a bit concerned about squirrles and mice chewing cables and setting up nests in the servers during winter months, but that is always an issue with cheap office space.

I am using this site as the reference for my crawler because, for one, much of the crawling will be done from my garage using a DSL and Cable modem. But the bot will identify itself using this website as our homebase. The actual search results will be incorporated into our primary automotive website buzztrader.com hopefully late in 2007.

We are currently, (by we I mean me and my room full of computers), crawling sites to determine content categories and set up the primary databases that will be subjected to human reviews.

After attempting to build a small search engine at smartybee.com the reality of hard drive space contraints and massive backups became more obvious and discouraging. Trying to beat google's 100,000 servers was just not in my budget. And although I did ask my wife to increase my allowance, it just did not give me the $100million in cash that I needed. I even tried looking under the sofa cushions and under the carpets in my car, still $99,999,994.72 short.

My choice is to either get 99,970 more servers or make the internet smaller. I choose to make the internet smaller by limiting all websites to automotive related content. By restricting listings to only websites that involve cars, parts, restorations, clubs and other automotive topics the database will be more manageable and possible even on my limited budget.

In addition to limiting content to automotive related, every website will be reviewed mannually before being included. This concept was initiated by yahoo years ago and made the company huge because of the quality of results. Google has mastered technology, but they don't tell you how much human review they actually do to back up technology.

We know it is not possible to filter all spam, unless we review every website.

By using a network of volunteers we can review sites for inclusion and then crawl the site to get more details about the page content. The results will be compiled by our faster automated network of servers, but the process of approving sites will be in the hands of individual car enthusiasts accross the country.

This will make our database slower to build, but more relavent and useful than any other search engine online. Once included, the bot can get the pages and update the cached copies regularly.

So here I am, with about 30 servers in my garage compared to google's 100,000 servers in high end data centers around the world. I have great technology but not the big bucks to drive my next big Search 2.0.

But I am building the database in my garage. When the system is complete, and working. I will load the servers into the trunk of my car and haul them to the datacenter. Then turn on the power and "BAM!", instant search engine.

I have been tossing around search engine programing with affiliate sites with as many as 20 million products and now finally with SmartyBee.com. Smartybee is a very sucessful test of the technology. It is only a test and a great example of what is in store for release in early 2008 at buzztrader.com.

You can read my search development blog from last year at squigglebot.com as I pondered the possibility of building a search. For more about the overall products and websites run by our company in the about us page.

I have a long established base in search engine design failures, but one time or another, something will work. And like every other entrapenuer, I wont give up untill I find sucess.

The ultimate plan will be to open the database to all webmasters free with a real time web feed search that will allow any website to run a powerful automotive search engine for free. For more details on how we will feed the search read about our future business plans.

If you want to exclude our bot from your site, no problem just add us to your robots.txt file. We are not trying to include anyone that does not want to be part of our search or extract data from your website to build search engine scraper content spam. We hate those theives as much as you do. But there is a fine line between search engines and index sites.

Still, in a sea of abuse, there is a very big need for search engines. Without sites like google, we would be stuck surfing endlessly never finding what we are looking for. Google and the others have revelutionized the way we do research and surf the net. Without them, we would be lost.

In fact most people don't even know how to get to a website directly. They go to google, yahoo, aol or msn and search for the dot com they want. Sad, but true.

None the less, we are here to get our chunk of the search market. After some research and testing and a few small searches, we are ready to take the next leap and start a full fledged search engine.

We hope you do not find our bot invasive or troublesome. Our intent is good, but like all bots, we get grouped in with the bad crowd and until we prove ourselves we will be considered one of the "Bad Bots". We hope you will give us that chance and allow our bot free access to your html pages. If you want to exclude our bot we will respect your request, just read the instructions on the Bot Help page.