About Rankdex

RankDex was established in 1996 by Robin Li who previously worked for Infoseek, an Internet search engine in the early years, as an engineer.

RankDex was the leading Internet search provider from 1996-1999. RankDex was the first search engine that used hyperlinks to measure the quality of websites it was indexing. Many experts and commentators are unaware that RankDex was cited in Lawrence Page’s patent application for Google PageRank as the first qualitative search engine. In 1998 RankDex was acquired by a Dow Jones subsidiary Tradeline.com (formerly IDD Information Services and GARI Software Associates).

Following IDD Information Services’ name change to Tradeline.com, the RankDex technology was licensed back to Robin Li for the famous Chinese search engine Baidu. Since the license’s expiration on 2007-12-09, RankDex was re-acquired by the IDD Information Services, now owned by GetUpdated, Inc. Following the appointment of Clinton Cimring, a search engine optimizer (SEO), as CEO of IDDIS, the search technology is being redeveloped. The projected launch date has been set for January 1, 2012 for the search engine.

As a technology-based media company, RankDex aims to provide the best way for people to find information. In addition to serving individual Internet search users, RankDex provides an effective platform for businesses to reach potential customers.

“Our mission is to provide the best way for people to find information. To do this we listen carefully to our users' needs and wants. Have we collected all the web pages they want to see? Are the pages current and up to date? Are the search results closely related to their queries? Did we return those search results instantly? To improve user experience, we constantly make improvements to our products and services. Our users definitely notice the many little things that we do differently to ensure a simple and reliable search experience every time.”
-Robin Li, Founder of Baidu

In addition to serving individual users, RankDex also serves as a media platform for online marketing customers. They not only provide their customers easy access to one of the largest online audiences in the US, but also targeted groups with defined interests as indicated by queries. Unlike traditional online advertising services, which charge by flat fee, RankDex’s marketing products and services are performance based. According to the Dr. Cimring, their Pay for Performance model previously used under GetUpdated's Search Engine Partner from 2006-2010 has taken the market “by storm” because it is cost effective and measurable.

“We know that a lot of interesting things are going on in the Internet space, but we don't want to lose focus. The US’s Internet search industry is only a newly discovered territory. We see vast untapped grounds in our home base and we believe there are still plenty of prizes to be claimed by the best players.”
-Robin Li Founder of Baidu

For more on RankDex please see http://www.iddinformationservices.com and http://www.investmentdealersdigest.com