Introduction
I recently had a sponsored ad for a Christian search engine called Glorifind, which was previously called Search Belt (and still accessible at that URL at http://searchbelt.com). A search engine “for Christians.” (Excuse me while I roll my eyes.) I earned my master’s and am now earning my PhD at a Christian college. I’ve read the Bible. I don’t think anyone needs a Christian search engine.
My Experience
Clicking the link leads me to the Glorifind search engine. It’s pretty, with a set of purple-hued wallpapers. It’s minimalist, like Google. There are a few links below the search and some in the footer. I decided to search for “economic development in iowa”, a search relevant to my recent blog post.
Unfortunately the first search took a long time. I’d estimate 5 seconds or so to return results. Compared to Google which is lightning fast, that felt like an eternity. Interestingly, I reran this search while writing this article and it was just as slow. And when the search engine results page (SERP) loaded, the entire “above the fold” experience were sponsored ads. On a second search, only one sponsored link was included. Changing the search up slightly (to “economic development iowa”) brought back a full page of ads:
After scrolling past the sponsored ads (3 of them), all of the results turned out to be from the Iowa EDA website. Great, unless I needed information from literally anywhere else. There’s no next button. You only get one page of results.
The About page is pretty standard, except for one part that stuck out to me:
“3. Targeted website removals. There are some websites that either don’t care about truth, or only care about leading people astray.”
I easily guessed one. If you search for CNN, your search results are full of a bunch of domains, but no CNN.com. The same applies if you search for CNN.com itself. Embarrassing.
I’ll put others as I find them: MSNBC is also blocked.
Conclusion
I wouldn’t recommend anyone use this search engine.