Exclusive email interview with Paul le Roux of Webwobot Search Engine

Tell us a little about yourself and the Webwobot Search Engine.

I'm Paul le Roux, a self-taught programmer born in Cape Town, South Africa. WebWobot actually started as something entirely different, a utility program for my own use, and tinkering with a little added functionality made me realize there was a possibility of actually doing this project, and it tickled my interest enough to give it a go and see what happens. So far, we're happy enough with the learning curve to have started a complete redesign & rewrite of the backend. Thanks to two great friends & business partners, Andrew Carney (PHP,MySQL) and Andre Neves for organizing hardware and colocation, making all of this possible.

I see that Webwobot is a small Search Engine especially when comparing to Google and others. How would you say Webwobot is different and what advantages does a smaller Search Engine has over it's bigger rivals?

WebWobot likes content, and doesn't mind at all if you happen to be an expert in your field, but have only limited web-savvy. It prefers webmasters who spend their time writing about their passion, rather than trying to fool it into ranking them highly. It couldn't care if you come recommended by royalty & statesmen - if it thinks you're talking rubbish, you shouldn't rank high, if at all. That's the intention anyway.
The advantage is that when you're at the bottom, there's only one way to go, and that's up - nothing to lose!

What do you think of the general direction in which conventional Search Engines are heading? Do you expect conventional Search Engines to grow stronger or do you see bumps ahead? And what major changes do you see will happen in a couple of years?

My feeling is that as with any business or organization, passion gets lostproportionately with size. Thus I think emphasis gets shifted away from results and onto big money, and I believe that larger established search engines will be looking more and more to diversify and capture new gaps in the market. Thus search starts to lose priority and stagnates in comparison to the growth it had while still emerging.I think that as the web grows we will be talking about the top 20 search engines rather than the top 3. How big is the web right now anyway? Have we even got half of it indexed yet? Perhaps one day WebWobot could have indexed the other half? LOL

I had mentioned "conventional Search Engines" in my previous question. What do you think of the newer Search Engines, like those blog and rss feeds Search Engines? And what do you think of Social Networking and those community based sites? As Internet users get more internet savvy, do you think that these sites will take over traditional Search Engines or at least make them less relevant?

I think there's definitely scope for niche engines, especially where the field covered is the owner's personal field of interest. Same with community-based sites.

I have always believed that Search Engine Optimization is a must because Search Engines are never perfect. So I have to ask this question - What do you think of the Search Engine Optimization scene nowadays? Do we have too many snake oil salesperson and do you believe that Content is King and SEO is dead? Lastly, do you believe Search Engines' algothrim will one day become perfect enough to completely remove the need for SEO?

I think that with any package, if you strip away all the wrapping, you inevitably find what's really inside. I think that SEO is fast becoming like a professional wrapping service. One day you will simply ask your computer a question and it will provide answers, do further research for you, and tell your dog to fetch the paper for it.

Due to the fact that I own a Web Directory, I will take this opportunity to ask you -What do you think of general web directories these days? Are they still relevant or do you think they will be extinct soon?

I suspect they'll always have a place, especially if human-edited and in the editors' fields of interest, which should guarantee a high standard of quality. Perhaps general directories will send visitors to niche directories, who would be more authoritative on what sites to go visit in their respective fields.

Webwobot has an interesting concept called PageTrade which helps promote relevant linking. Tell us a little more about this and it's advantages and how do you intend to promote this idea to your users.

PageTrade came to me as a way for webmasters to kill two birds with one stone: Firstly in gaining relevant inbound links, the relevancy being guaranteed by the mere fact that the content doing the linking is written by someone from the site it's to be linking to.The second bird off the same stone lies in each webmaster gaining fresh quality content from somebody who knows a lot about their field. Even though that content may not fit exactly into your overall theme, it adds more areas of interest and thus a bit more depth to your site. For example, do you read only the news sections of your local newspaper? Or do you also extend your entertainment to reading the comics, weather report and browse over the classifieds? Now... would you have your cartoonist also doing the weather forecast? Or would you have each contribution coming from an expert in their field? Apply the moral of this example to your website, and there's the thinking behind PageTrade.I've recently included link & banner trade as options to humour those old dogs who simply refuse to learn new tricks, and the really adventurous can experiment with negotiating combination & cross-trades.

Thank you for the chance to have this interview.

Thank you.

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