Backers
20 days left
Gluc.com is a search engine that is powered entirely by human opinions and votes. When a user asks a question or searches for a keyword, they will receive a list of websites recommended by other users. Websites are ranked by the number of votes they receive.
Gluc redistributes 80% of the advertising revenue to the users that contributed in the results either by suggesting links or by voting them. Gluc rewards people for sharing with others what they are already doing – discovering the web one page at a time.
Say you want to find the best breast augmentation doctor in the UK. You could care less how optimized the doctor’s website is, or how many other websites link to it. You just want a doctor you can trust so you figure out that the best way to find him is to ask other people. With gluc.com, you can get your answer in seconds.
Gluc search results will not be distorted by malicious marketing or SEO attempts, creating a healthy competitive environment that benefits both consumers and businesses.
1. Voters cannot create fake profiles to submit fake votes. Each voter account is associated with a Paypal id which confirms the true identity of the voter.
2. It is illegal to bribe people to break their agreement of honest voting with us. It is not illegal to place links on the web which is what other search engines rely on to get a sense of web page authority.
3. It would require a large amount of effort to find enough people willing to break their agreement and even if they did find them, each one require a hefty bribe to accept the risk of losing the life income generated from the honest votes, if caught.
4. Outsourcing this dirty job would be next to impossible. Any outsourcer would have to rely on reusing a network of bribed voters. Detecting such a network would be trivial on our side after a few vote runs.
Ever felt like you had to speak “search engine” language when typing in your questions or keywords in Bing or Google? With gluc.com, you can use human language and rest assured that it will understand you as if it were human.
We take a 20% cut and pay out 80% of advertising revenues to the voters.
You simply click on a small button that appears next to the link in our search results. You have to be logged in to vote.
You do not need to be logged in to search. However, to vote or suggest links you have to create a gluc account and provide us with your Paypal email to confirm your identity and be able to receive payments.
No. You can vote for links that others have suggested or you can suggest a new link. If you try suggesting a link that has been suggested before, then we count your suggestion as a vote. Suggesting a link earns you more rewards than voting a link because it takes more effort.
Google has put a lot of effort in establishing its presence in the social media space in the previous years. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam department, says that the company looks at social media signals but they currently do not offer satisfying answers when used in isolation.
It is likely that Google will increase the emphasis on how many g+ votes a web page has received and rely less on links in the following years. This process must be gradual and assumes wide adoption of the g+ platform.
We believe that Google has no reason to introduce a paid-voter model unless competition heats up. The adoption of such a model would introduce a large cash outflow and it is in Google’s interest to avoid that for as long as it can, or for as long its search results are better than competition.
Users will be rewarded for finding the best results first. The reward system will ensure that massive scale voting without any research does not produce any gains for the voter. Our user compensation algorithm will aim at incentivizing users to vote consciously over the long term.
If we manage to generate a small momentum through PR, then we can use the “first answer, highest pay” system to create a sense of urgency and entice users to contribute. Users will benefit from their contributions for life, and there are many questions that people will never stop asking. Answering these questions first may be akin to hitting the jackpot for some users.
Gluc is not creating another “like” button for websites to add to their pages. Users can vote for links on our website by clicking on the arrow next to their respective listing (as it appears in our banner on the top of this page).
The fact that users vote for pages within the context of a specific question is very important. The same pages may receive votes as answers to different questions. This enables gluc to “learn” how useful a page is for different subjects and puts us one step ahead of Google and Facebook.
The idea is simple on the surface and it will feel and look simple to the end user. However, there are many obstacles to overcome. For example, we need to deal with dynamic urls while identifying unique pages. The system must be scalable which we intend to tackle with the use of Amazon’s AWS. We also need to find a way to identify very similar questions to avoid redundant content. However, the crowd powered approach means that we don’t have to worry about web spiders or web crawling. In fact the crowd-powered approach means that the hardest part of a search engine – the content ranking system, is automatically outsourced to our users.
"I want to re-invent search."
Back gluc.com minimum pledge is €5
Ioannis (30) has recently launched two online ventures (foob.me and doyoutoo.me) after working as an Equity Research Analyst at Credit Suisse in London. Previous to that, he led a team of six software developers in Bangalore India (glupod). He holds an MSc in Finance from IE Business School, a BSc in Computer Science and a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Eleftherios (25) is a fifth year PhD student at Princeton University, focusing on Number Theory and Automorphic Forms. Eleftherios has won two bronze medals in the International Mathematical Olympiad and in the Mediterranean Mathematics Competition, and received the IKY award from the Kapodistrian University of Athens twice.
Terpsi (25) is working as a trainee in the Insurance & Claims department of Hellenic Star Shipping Co. Terpsi has also worked for Millennium Bank as an assistant in the Mutual Funds department and holds a BA in Business Administration from the University of Piraeus (GPA 2.1).
Platon (27) has worked as a Software Engineer for CASP S.A. where he created a prototype of a semantic framework for production line knowledge management. His previous role was at the Institute of Communications and Computer Systems. Platon holds a Diploma in Electric & Electronic Engineering and a Masters in Management of Economic Systems from the National Technological University of Athens with a class rank of top 10%.
Giorgos (27) is the Head of Computer Systems for INP A.E. that offers insurance and re-insurance services. Giorgos held the same role at Fidelity A.E. and has three years of experience as a programmer at EMPNEUSIS, a website development company. Giorgos received his degree in IT and Telecommunications from the Kapodistrian University of Athens.