WiseNut is a crawler-based search engine now owned by Looksmart. It debuted as a beta in July 2001 and was officially launched in September 2001. It uses its own database, and when it started it was highly regarded by a number of critics. WiseNut introduced a fresh database and relevant hits. Like Teoma, WiseNut automatically clusters search results, a technology called WiseGuide.
Despite its good start, WiseNut never managed to become a major search engine. It lacks boolean search in the standard search and other advanced search features. Unlike other search engines, WiseNut does not cache pages.
Looksmart bought the search engine in April 2002 for $9 million with the aim of introducing a major search engine. The revamp was not successful. Despite delivering good relevancy and having a large database of over 1.5 billion URIs, WiseNut remains a small player as does parent company Looksmart. Alexa's ratings reveal since 2002, WiseNut's popularity has plummeted.
Looksmart's management is regarded as unlikely leadership for any rise in WiseNut's fortunes. It created a business that depended nearly totally on revenue from one client, considered by most observers as an elementary business strategy error committed by deposed Looksmart CEO Evan Thornley. Google's dominance in the crawler-based search space seems likely to be cemented by its capital raising of $3 billion expected in 2004.
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