Some of the primary users of search engines are children. But search engines don't always return family-friendly results.
Ah-ha.com, based in Provo, takes a different approach to helping consumers find information on the Internet.
The company, founded by Jay Bean in Ogden in 1999, operates a clean search engine with results that contain an online marketplace where advertisers can bid on keywords for premiere placement.
The company allows advertisers to attract targeted traffic for as little as a penny a visitor.
In April, ah-ha.com turned a profit. In May, it surpassed the 10,000-client mark and set traffic records that make it the third-largest search engine in the competitive pay-per-click market, according to company spokesman Matthew Longhurst.
Not bad for an organization with a "childhood" that has been both colorful and tumultuous. And it's a company that has evolved far from its roots. "We are today something we didn't intend on being," laughs chief executive officer Paul Brockbank, who clearly loves the story behind the current success.
Legally, ah-ha.com is eFamily.com Inc., created as a family portal that offered advertising and content aimed at families, including tips for parents, a teen section and general family content, all anchored by a Web search engine.
The Web search engine generated the page views and was clearly the way the company could make some money. That began to take off. Meanwhile, the stock market's technology sector took a dive in April of 2000. A major shareholder opted out of the company. And the several dozen employees received bad news: They were being let go.
"An interesting thing happened," Brockbank said. "We told them they were fired, and they went back to work, though we had no money."
Not everyone could afford to stay with no paycheck in sight, but some thought they could make a go of it. They worked for free, though the company gave them stock, which was pretty much worthless at the time.
The company managed to raise about $300,000, including a lot put in by management and employees. They kept going, working hard and unencumbered by debt. In May of 2000, the company had no revenue. "We think we were generating some," Brockbank chuckles. "But we had no way to bill and collect."
When a little money started coming in, the three-man management team, made up of Bean, Brockbank and Chris Stevens, asked employees what was the minimum they could make and still live. "It had nothing to do with competence. We paid people what they had to have."
By the end of the year, money had run out. They didn't want to quit. So they met with Myfamily, a company that was making money at the time. Myfamily acquired them in a deal that closed in December. It was a "pure stock merger."
Three months later, the new parent company's strategy changed, and the "marriage" unraveled. They undid the merger, and ah-ha.com went out on its own again, though MyFamily is a shareholder and has one of the five board seats.
They built the company back up "very carefully," Brockbank said, hiring as they could
Today, the goal isn't to get people to go to ah-ha.com. Instead, the company powers the search engines and directories for about 250 other companies. It has directories as partners. And advertisers. Web surfers often don't know they are using ah-ha.com to search the Web. Customers using the search engine include www.ABCsearch.com, www.Christianity.com, www.SportsNetwork.com and many others.
One source of finance is featured listings, where companies pay to be in favored spots.
They also offer a logo link next to the search function to help their customers with branding. And they get paid for click-throughs.
Many of the company's employees are college students, some part time and some full time.
"We couldn't afford an expensive developer, so we taught a brilliant philosophy student" to do the job, Brockbank said.
Financially, happier days have arrived and the company's worth is growing. It's now able to pay employees with cash, as well as stock. It has no debt, either.
E-mail: lois@desnews.com