Flush With New Cash, Structured Data Engine FindTheBest Ready To Make Its Move
It was unclear what to call FindTheBest when it first launched roughly two years ago: “anti-search engine,” “decision engine” or “comparison engine.” Today, it may not matter. The company just raised $11 million and has 22 million monthly users. (The site has raised $17 million to date.) CEO (and former DoubleClick founder) Kevin O’Connor sees […]
It was unclear what to call FindTheBest when it first launched roughly two years ago: “anti-search engine,” “decision engine” or “comparison engine.” Today, it may not matter. The company just raised $11 million and has 22 million monthly users. (The site has raised $17 million to date.)
CEO (and former DoubleClick founder) Kevin O’Connor sees the site as a way to help people make better decisions with reliable, structured data. Those data come from a range of public and private sources. Indeed, O’Connor says what he and his team have created is a “data platform” that can manage enormous amounts of data, synthesize and present that information in a user-friendly way.
While it has mostly stayed away from traditional product search, FindTheBest includes a growing range of categories: Education, Electronics, Health, Home & Family, Autos, Software, Travel and others. There are also some new, distinct URLs: FindTheCompany (data on US corporations), FindTheListing (classifieds), FindTheCoupons.
FindTheBest will use the new VC money to push into additional verticals and grow internationally.
Interestingly O’Connor told me that FindTheBest is getting higher CPMs in mobile than for ads on its PC site.
He also believes it’s now time for FindTheBest to build a consumer brand. The majority of consumers don’t know the site by name.
Most of the company’s traffic comes from SEO and its network of publisher partners, of which there are more than 100. While he sometimes likens the site to Kayak a more accurate, although incomplete, description of FindTheBest may be: a “next-generation Consumer Reports.” (That’s the brand’s potential.)
As a parallel development, it’s interesting to see Google adding more and more structured content to search results (Knowledge Graph) and mobile (Google Now).
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