WebProNews » Jux2

Jux2 Wizes Up Since Its Purchase

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:48:15 +0000

The Jux2 metasearch engine sold on eBay for $101,000 last October, and its purchaser, Doug Baker, recently posted about his acquisition.

Doug Baker of Wize picked up Jux2 on eBay, with a little help from “some faster-than human bidding software,” he wrote on the company’s blog.

“Why? Well, the technology looked promising and I thought it would either become a great investment or a spectacular gaffe that would not soon be forgotten by my wife, friends, business partners, etc,” he said.

Baker envisioned applying the technology behind Jux2 to a particular vertical niche, in their case product research. He elaborated on this in the post:

So we used one of the core ideas from Jux2′s technology-content aggregation-and started working on a metasearch tool for consumer and expert product reviews. What came out of that is Wize.com and WizeRank, a score that represents the summary of expert and user reviews from hundreds of reliable sources.

On the Wize website, the company noted how WizeRank for a product can be earned, not purchased. The only thing that can improve a Wize Rank is more positive data collected from independent sources, the site said.

Wize carries contextual advertising, and links to purchase products as provided by eBay’s Shopping.com. It draws reviews from shopping sites like Amazon, Shopping.com, and Pricegrabber to help construct its WizeRank ratings.

“I’m still convinced that the purchase was a steal,” Baker said.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

jux2 Desktop Search Widget

Lee Odden — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 19:16:13 +0000

It looks like the meta search engine jux2 has added a desktop search widget so you can do a combined search on Google, Yahoo and MSN without going to your browser.

If you don’t already use widgets, you’ll need to download the Yahoo widget engine first.

jux2 was named Best Meta Search Engine by SearchEngineWatch and was purchased by an Internet entreprenuer last year. Other enhancements made since the change in ownership of jux2 include the addition of a toolbar for Internet Explorer, adding MSN to search results, a Firefox search plugin and the ability to add jux2 search to your web site.

If you haven’t used it already, jux2 is kind of cool because you can see what’s missing from each search engine’s results from a particular query. The idea is that combined search results will allow you to leverage the ranking methodology of the three top search engines.

Lee Odden is President and Founder of
TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in organic SEO, blog
marketing and online public relations. He’s been cited as a search
marketing expert by publications including U.S. News & World Report and
The Economist and has implemented successful search marketing programs
with top BtoB companies of all sizes. Odden shares his marketing
expertise at Online Marketing Blog offering
daily news, interviews and best practices.

Google Toolbar 4 for SEO

Lee Odden — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 19:33:39 +0000

Aaron posts a great rundown on Google Toolbar 4 for Internet Explorer and what it means for search engine optimization.

He offers some cool SEO buttons that you can add to the toolbar as well as these interesting observations:

“If you have not yet started a Google account (or a few of them) it may be worth creating some such that you can leverage them down the road. Older Google accounts with longer search histories may be trusted to weight the end search results more than new accounts (similarly to how Google typically trusts old domains more than new ones).”

“Get busy tagging your sites and friends sites if you have not done so yet. Don’t forget to tag some legit authority sites to also keep your search profile looking somewhat legitimate and trustworthy.”

I don’t use MSIE very much myself and when I do, the only toolbar I have installed is for the meta search engine jux2. However, I might be adding this new Google Toolbar, because the features are pretty slick.

Nathan over at Inside Google has a very nice rundown on the new Google Toolbar as well.

Jux2 Adds MSN Results and Toolbar

Lee Odden — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 21:16:29 +0000

I just noticed today that the meta engine Jux2 has added several new features.

Since Jux2 was purchased on eBay a few months ago, a Firefox search plugin was added and recently MSN search results were added followed by a toolbar for Internet Explorer.

The toolbar allows you to search all major search engines: Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN. You can also compare results. There are also tools for highlighting keywords, zoom page size, a popup blocker and Alexa ranking of the page you’re viewing.

Another major change was the addition of ads to Jux2. I am not sure how I feel about that, but there are no comments on the blog about it yet, so I guess most people are ok with it.

If you really like Jux2 and want to add a Jux2 search box to your web site, there’s Jux2 search engine code posted on the Jux2 blog that makes it pretty easy.

Jux2 was named the best meta search engine by Search Engine Watch in 2005.

Hopefully the new ownership at Jux2 can keep adding updates to the blog. One of the things I noticed some other similar search engines doing is posting the most popular keywords on a monthly basis. That sort of information along with updated search engine overlap data would be interesting.

Jux2 Meta-Search Sells For 100K

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 15:31:07 +0000

Meta-search engine Jux2, which was put up for sale on eBay last week with a starting bid of one cent, finally sold for $101,100.

The search engine, developed as a research project seeking to exploit the lack of overlap in search results from major engines Google, Yahoo!, and AskJeeves, was sold to an eBayer by the pseudonym of 3vcap.

Jux2 was created in part by Aaref A. Hilaly and was named Best Meta Search Engine by Search Engine Watch in March of this year.

“[Jux2] provides a clean, simple way to see all the results from the most important major search engines. You can easily view what the big three crawlers of Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves agree on — plus the results that are specific to each search engine, as well. There’s no better way to understand the unique voices that each search engine speaks with,” writes Danny Sullivan.

Can I Have My Search Engine Delivered COD?

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 13:48:05 +0000

During lunchtime yesterday, bids for Jux2, a meta-search engine for sale on eBay (yes, you read that correctly), jumped from $6,105 to over $25,000. Seven days remain for the auction, and all eyes are on this spare time project selected as 2005′s best meta-search engine.

Jux2 was created as a research tool that tracked major search engine overlap, allowing a nice comparison tool of search results, receiving positive reviews from John Battelle and awarded top honors from Search Engine Watch.

Since those top accolades, Jux2 developer Aaref A. Hilaly took the experimental research tool offline (assumedly put back for review purposes) because there wasn’t enough time to devote to it.

The search engine is now for sale on eBay, a sale no doubt closely watched. Beginning with a price of one red cent, and with one week left for bidding, Jux2′s going rate is sitting at a mere $26, 300.