Greg Hartnett

Shimon Sandler, blogger and search engine marketer, interviewed me this morning about my experience with web directories. I really enjoy these types of interviews, as they get me thinking about the business at a macro level. Finding out what your users have questions about really helps to refine your product or service.

This most recent interview was more compelling than most. Shimon threw me a couple of questions that I wasn’t thrilled about - too much talk about Google and PageRank. But I guess that is what’s on people’s minds…

I like the preface, but…

(a) I haven’t been in the search industry since the beginning. I meandered my way into an existing space, saw a void in the market, and made use of some real estate.

(b) I don’t want anybody to be confused about the backrub thing - reading the preface might cause one to think that we actually had some involvement in the thesis or something. We didn’t. We were just fortunate enough to be cited by Page and Brin in their paper. Period.

(c) There are definitely other people that could be interviewed about web directories that would provide as much, if not more, insight into the model. Though I appreciate the kind words, I am not fully comfortable with the praise.

The rest of the conversation was pretty thorough - a good job by Shimon. He did some homework before the interview, and his questions reflect the fact. Thanks for the opportunity.