Adam Kalsey

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

Marketing

Atomz stupidity

18 Jun 2003

I’ve been using Atomz to provide search services for this site for about 4 years now. The free service will serve search results for 500 pages; any more than that and you need to pay. I’ve been very happy with the quality of the atomz service. The search results were great, the customized templates allowed me to seamlessly integrate search results into the site, and I get weekly reports on what people are searching for.

But all that came to an end about six months ago when I broke the 500 page barrier. Suddenly recent things I’ve written aren’t being indexed. A search for “Zempt” for instance, returns no results. So it’s time to change my search strategy. I figure I have three options. I could sign up for another search service like Freefind. I could install a site search tool like mnogosearch. Or I could sign up for the paid Atomz service.

I looked into the paid Atomz search engine and what I found was pure stupidity. The product manager in me guesses that their free product is probably aimed at and used by primarily small publishers. This includes small businesses, individuals, and non-profits. So you would imagine that they would have a paid service that is also aimed at those users. Something to encourage people to upgrade from their free offering to their paid offerings. But they don’t. According to the Atomz sales guy who contacted me, their paid search service starts at $15,000 per year. That’s a big leap from free. It’s obvious that the product is targeted squarely at enterprise customers. So the marketing advantage they have from their superior free service is completely wasted. I don’t know many people who would jump from a free service to one costing $1250 per month just because they have a few new pages.

Don’t get me wrong. Atomz is a great service and well worth $15,000 for a larger business. The search results are stellar — much better than I’ve seen on most internal searches. But why would you offer a free service — something that is going to be used by people without money to spend — when your target customer is a large company with lots of money?

Recently Written

Your OKR Cascade is Breaking Your Strategy
Aug 1: Most companies cascade OKRs down their org chart thinking it creates alignment. Instead, it fragments strategy and marginalizes supporting teams. Here's what works better than the waterfall approach.
Your Prioritization Problem Is a Strategy Problem
Jul 23: Most teams struggle with prioritization because they're trying to optimize for everything at once. The real problem isn't having too many options—it's not having a clear strategy to choose between them. Without strategy, every decision feels equally important. With strategy, most decisions become obvious.
Behind schedule
Jul 21: Your team is 6 weeks late and still missing features. The solution isn't working harder—it's accepting that your deadlines were fake all along. Ship what you have. Cut ruthlessly. Stop letting "one more day" turn into one more month.
VC’s Future Lies In Building Winners
Jun 21: AI and megafunds are about to kill the traditional venture model, forcing smaller VCs to stop hunting for hidden gems and start rolling up their sleeves to fix broken companies instead.
Should individual people have OKRs?
May 14: A good OKR describes and measures an outcome, but it can be challenging to create an outcome-focused OKR for an individual.
10 OKR traps and how to avoid them
May 8: I’ve helped lots of teams implement OKRs or fix a broken OKR process. Here are the 10 most common problems I see, and what to do instead.
AI is Smart, But Wisdom Requires Judgement
May 3: AI can process data at lightning speed, but wisdom comes from human judgment—picking the best imperfect option when facts alone don’t point the way.
Decoding Product Leadership Titles
Mar 18: Not all product leadership titles mean what they sound like. ‘Head of Product’ can mean anything from a senior PM to a true VP. Here’s how to tell the difference.

Older...

What I'm Reading