WiseNut
Type of site | Web search engine |
|---|---|
| Website | www.wisenut.com at the Wayback Machine (archived September 27, 2007) |
| Launched | July 2001 |
| Current status | Closed as of September 28, 2007 |
WiseNut was a crawler-based search engine owned by Looksmart. It debuted as a beta in July 2001 and was officially launched in September 2001. It used its own database, and when it started it was highly regarded by a number of critics. WiseNut introduced a fresh database and relevant hits. Like Teoma, WiseNut automatically clustered search results, a technology called WiseGuide.
Despite its good start, WiseNut never managed to become a major search engine. It lacked boolean search in the standard search and other advanced search features. Unlike other search engines, WiseNut did not cache pages.
Looksmart bought the search engine in April 2002 for $9 million with the aim of introducing a major search engine. The revamp was not successful. Despite delivering good relevancy and having a large database of over 1.5 billion URIs, WiseNut remained a small player.
Wisenut closed for good on 28 September 2007.