Curt Dalton, CEO of The Internet Time Machine

In this exclusive interview, we talk to Curt Dalton, CEO of The Internet Time Machine about his new venture - The Internet Time Machine, and how it can discover emerging trends. They monitor subjects, ideas, products that  have increases in search volume and mentions, and then compare it to see if "supply" like search results numbers and advertisers, is keeping up with demand.  If demand is taking off and supply is remaining constant, you have a new niche or market to look at that could be profitable.  Enjoy!

Tell us a few words about yourself and your professional background? What were you engaged in before starting the Internet Time Machine project?

I started out as a network administrator for a small start up in the gaming area after graduation from the University of Chicago.  I studied online marketing and Internet growth and realized that there was enormous amounts of information available on the web, that if harvested right, could basically, "tell you the future".  Up until this point, no one had really figured out a way to apply a supply/demand curve to search volume and new trends and products.  Everyone had focused on "demand" because those numbers were readily available all over the Internet, but figuring out the "supply" numbers and how to organize them was a challenge.

Would you explain what Internet Time Machine is, and how did you come up with the idea?

The Internet Time Machine is a series of high powered cloud computer networks that linked together to study internet keyword trends. It was a project that started 8 years ago cost over $225,000 to put together. At any one time this series of computers, what we call The Internet Time Machine, charts the search trends AND RESULTS of over 45,000,000 keywords. The Time Machine can chart what words are grabbing more search volume every month, every week, every day, and every hour 

Remember, a niche develops when the supply and demand curve in a particular area is not efficient. If you just have trends, or search volume, you will not make money without the other side of the equation, the results.  We monitor over 55,000,000 sources online every 24 hours to get the "results" side.  To find out how many organic results there are for a topic, how may pay per click ads there are for topic, how many mentions there are of the topic in blogs, forums, etc. 

Basically the Internet Time Machine studies what people are talking about and searching for, yet can't find.  We monitor subjects, ideas, products that  have increases in search volume and mentions, and then compare it to see if "supply" like search results numbers and advertisers, is keeping up with demand.  If demand is taking off and supply is remaining constant, you have a new niche or market to look at that could be profitable. 

The idea came from seeing the lack of products to help marketers find new opportunities BEFORE they became saturated with sellers and products.  I decided to take a basic economics equation and apply it to the Internet.

 

How can businesses capitalize on what Internet Time Machine has to offer?

Businesses love the Internet Time Machine because we show them what products, trends, styles, and new ideas are hot topics before anyone else can recognize them.  We put strict math to the test and use it to tell us what is "up and coming" in the world.  We use actual search volume, blogs, and forums to see trends and niches in their infancy.  We allow the business owner to use a filter button in the software to really drop down to very new ideas and trends that are just starting to move and search through them for relevant terms to their industry.

The key service offered by Internet Time Machine is powered by a new search engine called Now Relevant. Tell us something more about it.

NowRelevant.com is the link to The Internet Time Machine's backend search engine that give you every written word about a subject for the past 14 days. It monitor millions of sources and feeds to give you the most up to date and pertinent information on your subject. With the historical clutter that permeates the web (not all of the html pages are clutter, but much of it is irrelevant now) we decided to set up a complex system of filtering and algorithms to give you just discussions and information about your subject for the past 14 days only.

Contemporary Search Engines including the likes of Google, Yahoo!, AskJeeves and BING have all been presenting the internet masses with most recent 'additions' to the web database, and have concerned themselves with making the most valuable of these new daily additions available to the public on a minute by minute, day to day basis. Such valuable resources include the latest running media information from blogs, news resources etc. Each of these search engines has set their own criteria to evaluate the desirability of a piece of information on the web, criteria being assessed through various search algorithms and other assessment algorithms such as the proprietory Google PageRank algorithm.

Search Engines are hence able to run PPC engines on top of their search interfaces, the advertising media being based purely on keywords input by users at the time of the search, and users of PPC Advertising services on these search engines have hence become a target for massive levels of spending incurred as a result of there being a serious lack of a 'targeted' and more 'focused' PPC engine that allows users to maximize on their PPC exposure by choosing keywords that they know are in demand, or have received considerable mention on the internet.

NowRelevant.com allows users of its PPC campaigns to access the wealth of its resources dating back chronologically to exactly 14 days from the time of their search. This enables both the viewers of search results as well as PPC advertisers to target their PPC campaigns to a specific set of keyword phrases that are bound to receive public attention no matter what, enabling advertisers to compete better on NowRelevant.com with a much lower advertiser competition ratio than found on any other search engine.

Users of NowRelevant.com's search facilities will be able to retrieve a specific subset of information dating back on 14 days, allowing them to immediately benefit from the most up to date and recently mentioned information. Users of the NowRelevant.com PPC engine will therefore be able to reap the benefits of a highly focused PPC campaign where advertiser competition for a specific set of keywords changes by the minute - it's based on the most recent information coming into our databases by the minute, so there's no chance of the same CPC levels staying for more than a minute either!

What is your secret weapon for competing with the search engine giants?

Don't compete with them at all.

Find a niche that they are too big to cover, in this case time based results that have relevance right now and not 20 years ago, and try to win that niche over for their search.

Google is excellent and being Google, so don't try to be better at the stuff they are great at right now.

What is the business model behind your new venture?

The Internet Time Machine is based on a continuity program.  There are 3 different membership levels that offer different levels of access to information. NowRelevant.com works of a creative advertiser based PPC program that allows for video PPC ads as well as picture ads in search results.

What are your plans and ambitions for Internet Time Machine? How do you see it evolving over the next years?

I see the Internet Time Machine becoming a necessity for almost all online business in the next few years as we track all keywords and phrases and can break massive amounts of information down into understandable trend analytics. The area of trend analytics is one of the biggest new industries to be in as companies grapple with how to digest social media, blogs, tweets and so on. Compressing the information and giving them relevant answers is a huge demand area.  I hope to build out a corporate presence as well growing the current blog based video site.

How would you recommend Internet Time Machine to our readers?

If you want to know what the next big trends are, whether in general at a macro level or in your own business, before anyone else, then the Internet Time Machine is your only option.  We don't rely on human scouts or just "demand" based information.  We look at demand BUT then compare it to supply, to see if there is an opportunity there.  So many people and businesses have made the mistake of just chasing demand, only to find out that the market was saturated and/or someone can bring a product t market cheaper than you can.

 

Thank you for the interview.