"cRANKy" for the over 50 crowd

A recent addition to the search engine world is cRANKy, (I give it points for the clever spelling), which processes each search request it receives "from the perspective of someone who is at least 50 years old."

Jeff Taylor, whose name you might recognize as the founder of Monster.com, created cRANKy because of his belief that people over 50 are frequently overwhelmed by the number of search results they receive when using more well-known search engines such as Google and Yahoo!
"Our research found that people 50 and over are confused about searching on the Web," says Taylor. "It's hard for them to understand all the results." Taylor also runs Eons, a company that creates products catered to baby boomers.

In response to a search request, cRANKy only displays four results in the non-advertising section of the page, whereas Google and Yahoo! typically show 10 or more results.

cRANKy's birth began when it partnered with the Internet research firm Compete Inc. with the goal of identifying "the 500,000 most popular Web sites among people at least 45 years old." The top 5,000 were critiqued by reviewers, who then wrote a synopsis of each site's content and "tried to ensure the index contained more direct links to the most meaningful information."