Splatsearch.com came alive before Backrub and was used quite a lot.
It went into neglect and wasn't ever built on because Google became the big player.
I recently bought the domain from the owner for the low $thousands because I loved it and it was one of the first search engines I used.
The plan is to build some kind of intelligent search engine but to fund it I have created a comparison site and coupon search engine.
It covers quite a few country's and 3 languages.<p>I would love a peer review from fellow HN`ers to know how well I am doing.