Interview With IceRocket Blogs Search CEO Blake Rhodes
The IceRocket Search Engine has been around for a couple of years now but recently was thrusted into the public eye because of their connection with Mark Cuban and decision to redirect themselves as more of a blog search engine. Entering the same atmosphere as Feedster, PubSub, and Technorati; IceRocket has some stiff and established competition. However, I spoke with IceRocket’s CEO Blake Rhodes today about their plans a bit and Blake seems quite confident that their blog search will compete in their chosen market – which may still be in its infancy stages.
Search Engine Journal : Blake, what was the original focus of IceRocket when the engine was first started? How different has it now become?
IceRocket CEO Blake Rhodes : We originally started with the focus being web search and have since shifted more into blogs. We try a lot of different things like blogs, phone pics, news and will continue to do so.
SEJ : IceRocket blasted into the “mainstream” after Mark Cuban showed interest and helped you with funding. How did that come about? How much has Mark helped IceRocket?
Blake : Mark and I were both interested in search and we had a lot of similar ideas so we teamed up about a year ago. Mark has helped tremendously, he knows a lot about the search space and blogs in particular, so it’s a great fit
having him involved. I can’t think of anyone else we’d rather have involved in IceRocket.
SEJ : What led IceRocket to get into Blog Search?
Blake : We realized that there is a lot of great information in blogs that can be used a number of different ways. For example if I want to go to dinner in Dallas, I always blog search the restaurant on IceRocket to see if anyone has anything to say. Blogs are very honest, people are writing their opinions and as a business person it is a great tool to track your
company and the different things associatied with it. When it became clear that blog search was so useful we decided we needed to offer it.
SEJ : What kind of future do you see for IceRocket in the Blog Search sector?
Blake : I think we can be very successful in blog search. We have come a long way and will continue adding new stuff and improving our current offerings. We are competing with everyone.
SEJ : What kind of obstacles do you see with developing IceRocket and its future?
Blake : I think blog spam is an obstacle that everyone faces. I’m confident that the folks hosting blogs will work with us to help resolve this problem.
SEJ : What types of partnerships is IceRocket involved in to distribute your blog search results?
Blake : We have partnered with Answers.com and Blog Search Engine, there is a link to our blog search on their results pages. We have a few other partnerships in the works right now as well.
SEJ : What do you currently have up your Research and Development sleeve?
Blake : We just launched a link tracker tool that bloggers can use to display exactly how many people are linking to their posts. We are planning to launch the IceRocket 500 soon. That will be a list of 500 top blogs taking a number of things into consideration for those rankings. Stay tuned, we have plenty up our sleeves.
