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2017-09-08 09:50 AM
Chrisjan Pauw
Decentralized Search Engine Explained
What is a decentralized search engine?
A decentralized search engine makes use of distributed ledger technology.
Using Blockchain gives you more privacy when it comes to searching online for the products and services that you love.
Instead of major search platforms deciding what is, what is not relevant to you, and basing their ad campaigns on a plethora of wide ranging data they silently collected, you decide what information you want to share.
In return, you receive targeted ads that are of specific interested to you.
Apart from giving users back the ownership of their personal information, it’s also beneficial to businesses. They are not forced to target people that big online advertising platforms tell them to target.
They only advertise to users who are already searching for their product and therefore have a relative degree of interest in it. This narrow-focus advertising can drastically improve conversion rates and increase sales.
How does it work?
It functions like an ordinary search engine.
It provides a platform for you to search the Internet. Relevant information about your searches is stored on the Blockchain. By continually browsing and interacting online through a Blockchain-based search engine, you are building up an online identity and buyer persona.
This is already happening through conventional search engines, however, with a decentralized platform, you are in control of how your information is used and with whom it is shared. Your data is encrypted with a privacy key and stays secure and anonymous unless you decide otherwise.
You have the option to make this information available to specific retailers by entering into a smart contract directly with the advertisers. This cuts out advertising middlemen who often bombard Internet users with meaningless pop-ups and sponsored ads that cost businesses millions in advertising costs.
In addition, users can also be compensated for each relevant search, transferred directly from the advertiser to the user. One such an example is BitClave’s Active Search Ecosystem (BASE) which will compensate users for relevant searches with their own digital currency, CAT (Consumer Activity Tokens). The currency can then be used for online purchases at accepting retailers.
The main benefit of such an ecosystem is that it allows users to potentially profit from their online searches and receive information about products they are truly interested in.
In turn, businesses advertise directly to a user’s need. Shoppers are more likely to make a purchase at this point, which will drastically increase the average conversion rate of two percent that organizations pay billions of dollars to achieve.
Why do we need decentralized search engines?
The online advertising sphere is ruled by a small number of giant corporations, including Google, Amazon and Facebook.
These big corporations basically dictate to businesses how they should run their advertising campaigns if they want to stay competitive.
What we might not always realize is that, whenever we browse the Internet, through search engines, social media or big retailers, a lot of our personal information is tracked and logged in some shape or form.
This information is then used in various ad campaigns that businesses pay huge sums of money for to be part of, hoping that they might get a piece of the billion-dollar online consumer industry. These campaigns are translated into the invasive pop-up ads, and mostly irrelevant, sponsored ads that litter our everyday online experience.
The industry is therefore in need of disruption.
What a decentralized search engine, like BitClave, does is put the power back into the hands of everyday consumers and the businesses from which they buy.
It creates an environment where you only receive advertising from organizations that interest you and businesses only pay to advertise to people that are looking for their product.
In simple terms, you get the opportunity to make money by receiving highly relevant offers while you browse the Internet.
For businesses, it means a significant reduction in advertising costs by cutting out the middlemen (ad campaigns), while at the same time achieving higher revenues through increased conversion rates as a result of the laser-focused advertising.
How can it be applied in the real world?
Say you are looking at stocking your summer closet.
While you are searching for the latest trends, the Blockchain-based application records information about the parameters within which you are searching.
This allows merchants to tailor their offers based on these parameters (i.e. summer clothes), making the advertising highly targeted and timely.
While you are searching, you are not bombarded with vague advertising that doesn’t concern you at that point in time, such as buying a new house or car, or a pick of the best restaurants in town.
At best, this irrelevant advertising only serves as a distraction from your current priority, which is to buy clothes.
However, if your priority is in fact to buy a new car or house, again the platform will ensure you only receive relevant offers based on your budget and other criteria you are conducting your search in.
If you decide you want to find out a bit more about a specific offer and click on it, you receive compensation for your troubles.
The use cases are nearly limitless and can be applied to any product or service we are interested in and searching for online. All the while getting compensated for the targeted offers that you receive.
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