Lagos, Dec. 1, 2010 — A Nigerian youth, Christian Onah has built a search engine called Discovad Search. The site which was launched on Nov. 19th, had to wait 12 days later to become fully operational, due to post release testing. According to the founder, search engines and the Internet in general has become highly imperative in developing lifelong skills of information fluency.

"Everyday, millions of people all over the world search for information on the web - both personal and professional, easy and difficult, past and future, funny and serious, to meet their various demands", he said. "Being an admirer of online research/study right from my Secondary School days, it has always been my hobbie to search online for every bit of uncertainty; knowing fully well that it simplifies informed decision making."

Currently ranked among the top 10 countries with highest number of internet users(source: internetworldstats.com), the timing would not have been better than now.

On the question about acceptability and usability among Nigerian internet users, he remained optimistic - "Nigerians' poor attitude towards local content is gradually changing. Just after announcing it online, users have started responding positively, with some even promising to make it their personal home page. Though some have started comparing it with the likes of Google, but that shouldn't be the case now", he continued. "I am more interested in simplifying the process now; and if given a chance, will greatly improve on it and move on to make a big difference."

Discovad.com was launched on Nov. 19, 2010 by it's founder to pioneer Nigeria's entrance into the Internet search engine market. The site is currently configured to provide simple and relevant search results for information, images, news and jobs from all across the Web.

How do you generate the results? Google API?

How do you generate the results? Google API?

I was wondering too

Just visited the site, its amazing but there's room for improvement

Question: What exactly do we gain from this besides national pride? If its just basic search with no extras then Google is a better bet then. just my 2 cents worth.

I don't really care how you generate results. All I know is that this is good news. Nigeria is among the top 10 countries with the highest no. of internet users, so we need to contribute something, not just take and defraud (yahoo) people.

please search nairaland, there are at least 6 or 7 "Nigerian Googles" on the site.

Candid Advice: If you are not relying on google but actually using a REAL crawler, then focus on Nigerian sites and build up your index fast otherwise (if you are just echoing google) forget it.

Good, Good.

Wow! Good work, great news, This is what am talking about. Think global, act localBy the time we build our applications like facebook, clickbank, paypal, adwords, autoresponders then these albinos will stop doing shakara for us.

Pls, how can I contact this guy? More job needs to be done. Or any developer in the house? Let's rob minds, I have [b]bad [/b]applications up my sleeve,

Not sure if this will stand the test of time or go the way of cuil.com. Anyway, this is what the search engine looks like. . . .

we need to encourage the guy he has done a nice job. if our government likes developments, people like him and others that have such version should be encouraged.

that guy need support. there is more to search engine.

@surveycash what do you have in your sleeve?

Up Naija

great news. It's good to see that Nigeria is fast becoming an active participant in the cyber world

Good work keep it up google also started like this too.

Interestingly, Vconnect is actually a business directory not a search engine. like the design and the functionality anyway especially the google maps.