Spock, a search engine which can be used to search the internet for details on individuals, has launched in a public beta.
This new search engine aims to provide a more accurate method of searching for people than using Google or Yahoo, returning more specific information by filtering out the irrelevant results. Around 30% of internet searches are related to people and Spock aims to tap into this market.
Spock, and other people search engines, including Pipl, ZoomInfo and others aim to organise and make all the publicly available information easier to find.
It uses information from profiles on social networking sites, including Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as allowing users to edit and add their own information to the search results. Spock has already indexed around 100m people, and is adding a million names every day.
Spock co-founder Jay Bhatti explains the site:
“We are a search engine organising information about people. How Google allows you to type anything and gives you a web document result, we give you results around people. That’s how we differentiate ourselves from other search applications, because we are solely focused on people.”
Spock allows users to claim their profiles, add tags and information and correct any inaccuracies in the search results. The company will have a system in place to prevent and false information being added to people’s profiles – users will have authority rankings which will determine the reliability of their edits over time. .
The search engine is backed by Clearstone Venture Partners and Opus Capital Ventures, raising $7m (£3.4m) in a first round of funding in December 2006.
