Yootsa.com: A Better Meta Search Engine?

Yootsa.com is one of the scrappier and newer U.S. “meta search engines.” Not yet one year old, the site considers itself a “new generation meta search engine,” by virtue of its simplicity and location-aware search function.

As part of its expansion plans, Yootsa recently launched a Yootsa.co.uk edition  and is planning on rolling out Yootsa.de and Yootsa.fr “soon.” Both the U.S. and U.K. versions also feature vertical categories.

We can’t help but chuckle to think the market may be coming “full circle,” in that Internet Yellow Pages directories started out as being organized ONLY by category. Then, the “one box” natural language search players invaded. Now is this industry toying with a new standard  of the one-box query supplemented by categories?

We are happy to see new search engines enter the market and are intrigued by Yootsa’s particular positioning. Apart from displaying Old Glory where the Union Jack should be flying on its U.K. edition, Yootsa.co.uk looks like it is off to a credible start.

Although the innards of its unique search algorithm will never be known to the layperson, Yootsa.com claims its engine is more skilled at understanding the intention of a user’s query. For instance, if a query is job related, job postings and results will be given priority in the results hierarchy. Yootsa claims to be particularly focused on “local” search results.

We’ve recently started to bang around with Yootsa.com (both the U.S. and U.K. offerings), and our early experiences are not yet conclusive. We’ll continue to do so and welcome your comments on the site and its comparison to the usual search suspects.