Web – Search Engine Targets Cranky Boomers

Are you a boomer who hates wading through a long list of search engine results? Jeff Taylor, famous for founding Monster.com, shares your crankiness—and has launched a new search engine to fix it. The search site, Cranky.com, hopes to cash in on targeted ads for the boomer demographic.

The site, launched in January, aims to simplify Web search by processing requests from the perspective of someone at least 50 years old. Taylor now serves as CEO for Cranky-.com’s parent firm, Eons.

As part of its strategy to deliver a smaller slice of search results, Eons has teamed with Compete, an online market research company, to identify and analyze 5,000 of the most popular websites used by a group of 500,000 users age 45 or older.

In marked contrast to Google, Cranky’s user interface lists only the top four authoritative sites matching the search term on the first results page. Numbers listed at the bottom of the page point to additional sites.

Eons’ members rate and review the sites. The ratings influence the top sites, delivered as results in future Cranky searches.

The search engine also provides tips and deep links for those less cranky researchers who want to dig deeper.