This is a summarized version of a French post.
Traffic on seeks.fr has increased to the point that we face two problems:
* we get throttled down by Google (that we use in the background);
* we do not comply with the TOS of underlying search engines such as Google that prevent third parties to re-rank or mix their search results.
Therefore, we’ve decided to improve seeks.fr because it appears to be useful to a bunch of people, and to do so we are taking the two following actions, as a first step toward better service and functionalities:
* we are studying the traffic during a short period of time (about a month) in order to understand where users are coming from, what they’re doing (are they coming once and leaving ? Are they finding what they want, and in how many steps ? Are they using seeks.fr because they use Windows ?, …);
* we are switching the server to using the Bing API (using a free key) since it is the only API out there that allows the re-ordering & mixing of textual search results.
Our aim is to offer a better Seeks.fr for common users, with two goals in mind:
* experiment new things in search, such as sharing and P2P enhanced results;
* build a strong Seeks node that will benefit the entire community (through the P2P calls issued from other nodes).
Hope it helps. Let us know if you have more questions.
