I have been aware of a website called killerstartups.com for just under a year now, I came across it one day as I checked my analytics program and saw a spike in traffic from this unknown site. As I viewed the source of the referral I was pleasantly surprised as to what I found.

The website is designed to make users aware of new websites and to learn about what they are and what they do. I was lucky enough to get a small interview with the CEO of www.killerstartups.com Gonzalo Arzuaga who took time out of his busy schedule to help us understand what they hope to achieve:

MR: Could you tell us briefly what Killerstartups.com is for the people who have not come across the site and what position you hold at the company?

GA: KillerStartups.com is a blog that reviews 30+ internet startups per day. Our community of internet startups, investors, press and bloggers and the techie enthusiast in general come to our site to try to get a hint about which startup might be the next Youtube, or the next big thing online. I’m currently the CEO.

MR: As you may have noticed over the past year, social media and social book marking websites have increased in popularity. Now people like myself work in seo on a daily basis and see people dismissing “Social Bookmarking” as a phase when really they should be using it in their strategies. What would you say would be the benefits of being listed on killerstartups.com for new websites.

GA: Visibility. If you think of that, everyday we publish 30+ reviews. That’s really helpful for other bloggers who want to write about. Also killerstartups.com in 6 months became a top 5,000 site in alexa. Last month we reached 170,000 visitors according to Compete.com. That’s basically a good way for a startup to get the word out, and get some people checking their site out.

MR: The way I understand Killerstartups.com to work is that anyone can submit a “killer” new website but it does take some time to appear on the site. What is done in this period? Do you not think you are losing out to potential traffic by doing this?

GA: Our members can submit their startup for the community to vote if they think it’s a killer or not. We’re working around the clock to make our submitting process faster. We get sooo many reviews per day… We’re soon launching a feature that’s called Speedy Submission, where members can pay a fee for us to review it within 24 hours.

MR: In terms of branding and marketing yourselves what strategies have you implemented to help you compete against rivals such as Sphinn.com?

GA: We don’t see sphinn.com as competitor at all. We’re only focusing on reviewing internet startups, 30+ per day. Our goal is to be the best at it.

MR: I noticed that you are still in the beta stages on the site, do you have any idea when the finished article will be complete and will there be any new features you can give us a sneak peak at?

GA: We’re right now focusing on improving usability on our site. We expect to be in Beta for at least 6 more months. Been busy right now thinking and planning some social features, can’t tell that much, sorry

MR: On a website’s listing you have a feature that describes what the future might possibly hold for the described website, do you know if any of the predictions have been realized, if so which ones?

GA: Too early to say. We’ve been online for around 8 months. We have to give the startups some time, let say 1 more year or so.

MR: Does killerstartups.com receive any substantial traffic from similar sites such as StumbleUpon or Sphinn and have you in any way encouraged this?

GA: No. We don’t get any traffic from SU.

MR: Have you ever been offered a large amount of cash for a stake in Killerstartups.com?

GA: Nope..

MR: Do you have any more projects on the go at the moment besides Killerstartups.com?

GA: Nope. It’s hard enough with this one

MR: Thanks for answering these questions Gonzalo, is there anything you would like to say to our readers before we end this?

GA: Sure, go check it out! www.KillerStartups.com

Ask.com and you shall receive..

Last night I was sat at home, relaxing not on my computer but watching TV with some friends and I happened to see a new Ask.com advert. Now I’m not sure if I’ve seen it before and just not paid attention to it, but last night I actually took it in. The advert was simply to promote the new design and usability at Ask.com. The advert showed an example of a simple search for London and what features you can utilize using ask.com

So I logged in to Ask.com this morning and did exactly as the advert indicated, I typed “London” in the search bar and immediately a Search Suggestions box drops down with relevant queries, top three being London, London underground map and London Map, all pretty relevant but I continued with just selecting London.

Once the three column results page was displayed my first impressions were nothing but admiration for what they had achieved. For so long have we been stuck in the world of 2 column search engines, the big G being the main cause for this as people get “familiar” with such layouts. Before you get scared it’s a very good design and it’s very web 2.0, with large fonts, clear headings, Maps, Current weather, images, Blogs and videos all being displayed on one page!

My goal was to find out some information on the London eye as I have never personally been on it. I used one of the related suggestions displayed on the left side column and was directed to a page full of useful information, photos and Blogs about the London Eye.

One really nice feature was that under the most relevant website (yes the first website really was the best) was a “More Tourist Attractions” drop down menu, which had all the other well known tourist hotspots for the city, again very easy to use.

So I thought to myself that ask have obviously used the best example on their TV advert so obviously the information about London would be of good quality. So I decided to search for “SEO”.

The results were quite different for a non geological search term. For a start only two columns were displayed so there were no images or videos or even Blogs listed on the page, my initial thoughts weren’t positive. However, I was about to discover something quite special, instead of expecting to have all the information in front of me without pressing the mouse more than twice I changed my ways. I clicked the “Blogs” tab on the left column and searched “SEO”.

I was immediately drawn over to the now “third” column which had appeared and listed were the “Top Feeds” which listed Seomoz, Seo Book, Matt Cutts, Seo BlackHat and Seo by the sea. To be honest the top three Blogs listed are in my opinion the three most useful bogs on the web in regards to seo, so top marks for this Ask.com. Something else caught my eye, under the main search results were two buttons, one named “Subscribe” and the other named “Post To”. If you click on the subscribe button a list a various feed readers are displayed which you can subscribe to very quickly, a nice feature if you’re in a hurry. Also the Post to button has incorporated the social media aspect of the web and you can bookmark directly using this button to such sites as Digg and Reddit.

In conclusion Ask.com has really impressed me in terms of usability and content and after using it for only around ten minutes, reverting back to Google, it just doesn’t feel the same. I suggest everyone have a look around the new site and let me know what you think?

Reading on the Digital Point forums Matt Cutts recently posted:

“As far as the tool bar Page Rank, I definitely wouldn’t expect to see it in the next few days. Probably not even in the next couple weeks, if I had to guess.”


The Page Rank update is still very much on the lips of webmasters worldwide. Hang on in there guys, it will happen in all good time.