Hi Mapcore!

[Sonnyblueballs]

Hey mapcore, hate to plug my website somewhere, but I feel that this website is relevant to everyone here. Let's see if I don't get in trouble, because I really feel you guys will get a kick out of it, and well I need your guys's help.

 

IndieSeeker.com was created to fill the gap between creator and indie fan, it is a search engine for indie products essentially. It requires people to submit to it, because it would be impossible to find products on its own, and for other reasons. So I am reaching out to forums to help me fill my search engine before official launch. Its a great way for you to gain exposure for your games.

 

The link is here.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Sonnyblueballs

[Sentura]

Copypasted from a previous form, A+ for effort.

[Sonnyblueballs]

Yeah, sorry. Im trying to reach as many people as possible.

[ng.aniki]

Next time, feel free to choose a topic title that tells about the content of the topic. 

 

More on the subject:

Why a search engine -like interface ?

 

People have to subscribe, so I guess there are not many things in there.

I have no idea what is actually on the website.

 

So now, I have to guess searchwords that could be related to indie projects subscribed to your website ? Or.. ? Did I miss something ?

Search engines are made to find precise information among a huge amount of data. 

 

A list or some browsing through categories + news/update feed about the projects, or whatever, anything, seems better than a search engine when you have a limited amount of data like that.

Right now I have more chance finding what I want with google than with your website.

 

I must be missing something big, I am kinda lost here.

Edited February 22, 2014 by ng.aniki

[Sonnyblueballs]

Next time, feel free to choose a topic title that tells about the content of the topic. 

 

More on the subject:

Why a search engine -like interface ?

 

People have to subscribe, so I guess there are not many things in there.

I have no idea what is actually on the website.

 

So now, I have to guess searchwords that could be related to indie projects subscribed to your website ? Or.. ? Did I miss something ?

Search engines are made to find precise information among a huge amount of data. 

 

A list or some browsing through categories + news/update feed about the projects, or whatever, anything, seems better than a search engine when you have a limited amount of data like that.

Right now I have more chance finding what I want with google than with your website.

 

I must be missing something big, I am kinda lost here.

Its submission based, the problem is, I am trying to get people to submit their products to the database, the problem is there is no realy way to have a crawler know if something is an indie product or not. Thanks for the input, I should probably put some categories / feed there. I just started trying to get people to submit today.

Maybe I shouldnt have called it a search engine, but if it gets more listings itll become a much more usefull tool.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Sonnyblueballs

[DrywallDreams]

So in order to increase visibility, you're making a search engine for indie games...?  If a player wants to search for specific content, they're going to use something with tags, if they want to search for titles, they're going to use google.  This really fills neither of those needs.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Marcem

[Sonnyblueballs]

So in order to increase visibility, you're making a search engine for indie games...?  If a player wants to search for specific content, they're going to use something with tags, if they want to search for titles, they're going to use google.  This really fills neither of those needs.

Thanks for the criticism , I guess. I do have taags. I could make them more easily accessible.

[Thrik]

I think you need to think seriously about how to make this useful to people. I just tried the following terms:

• adventure game
• rts
• shooter

Not a single one turned up any results, and those are actually types of indie games I was genuinely interested in so the site pretty much failed for my needs there. Yet if I go ahead and type 'indie game shooter', 'indie game rts', or 'indie game adventure game' into Google I get loads of examples of such games.

 

Certainly, presenting it as a search engine is the wrong way to go. You're effectively building a directory, so it should be presented as a directory complete with big imagery (people want to see these games), popularity/ratings, etc. You can still include a search feature, but it should be a secondary focus — otherwise you're focusing directly with Google, which is a battle you'll never win.

 

As for the submission issue, you need to do some work there. You can't rely on people to want to submit projects until it already looks worth submitting to. At the moment nobody even knows what games are there unless they happen to type the correct tags, which is in itself like an unfortunate game. There's no way to just browse, which is what people want from this kind of site.

 

So you need to present the games better, and also put some serious effort into pre-populating it with games — whether you do it manually or develop algorithms that can identify things on Kickstarter (or at least nominate them so you can manually add them) is up to you.

 

BTW, I'm going to move this to the regular off-topic forum. This is a sincere discussion so should be in a place more likely to get serious responses.

[Sonnyblueballs]

Hey thrik,

 

I am working on prepopulating the site with games and the like. I realized more will start publishing If fill it up and get some people coming in, in the first place. I am going to ad categories, because a lot of people say I need it. And I have stopped calling it a search engine.

 

Do you suggest placing the categories at the front of the page or to put them on in a separate location?

 

Thanks for your advice!

[Thrik]

Front of the page for sure, this seems like the kind of site where the home page needs to be somewhere where they can find exactly what they want within a couple of clicks or so of landing there.

[Sonnyblueballs]

Ok I will add some categories to the front of the page, anyways, I have made some progress filling the database as well. Still have a long way to go though!