Groxis Moves To Ad-Supported Search

Groxis was charging $49 for the desktop version of its visual search mapping tool “Grokker” but, like so many companies these days, hopes jumping on the online ad bandwagon will be a quicker road to financial success. The search results are limited to Yahoo for now; the ads are limited to Yahoo, too, although not as an exclusive. Groxis CEO R. J. Pittman told the New York Times Yahoo responded more quickly than Google to the company’s needs for relevant ads next to results.
I have to admit Grokker is one of those tools that not only sounds cool, it delivers. It can be confusing, though, and it’s probably not the best way to search in a hurry especially since jumping from search circle to search circle can be addictive. But doing a search for “paidcontent” led me in two clicks to Robin Good’s post jumping off from one I wrote — and forgot about until now — last November about ads in RSS feeds. Can it generate enough ad traffic? Don’t think Grokker has an answer for that. Of course, a John Markoff article is a start.

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