ANANZI WEBSITE ANALYSIS

The internet has fast become a hub of information about any topic that people could want. A place to help you find information easily about anything, such as web site designers or car sales people is called a Search Engine, and works a little bit like the Yellow Pages. Users can type in what they are looking for and the search engine will provide a list of websites where those services or products can be obtained. South Africa's very own Ananzi search engine (ananzi.co.za), provides such a service that is exclusively South African and contains only South African content.

Ananzi, which partners with the Braby's Holding Group, was born in 1996 out of an internal Internet Solutions project. It started out as South Africa's original Internet search engine. They have since grown to be the country's biggest search engine and today boasts with over 500 000 unique users per month, accessing over 10 million web pages.

Ananzi (ananzi.co.za) is hosted within the IS Data centre at Dimension Data's “The Campus” in Bryanston, Johannesburg, and also has their offices at The Campus.

The company has a friendly and casual atmosphere, making one immediately feel at home when walking into their offices. In general, they are quick to respond to any queries emailed through to them, and are quick to try and resolve problems clients might have. “We try to have a 24 hour response to problems and queries” said Mark Buwalda, MD of Ananzi.

Compared to other local search engines such as Aardvark, Mweb Search and South Africa Online, Ananzi is said to be the number one search engine in South Africa. They have a combination of search variety and a fully comprehensive audited directory of South African websites. They also boast with the fact that they are one of the fastest search engines in South Africa since updating their technology in June 2000.

Ananzi consists of two sections, the SA Site Directory and the Search Engine (SA Web). Websites can be submitted to them for inclusion via their website from where the Ananzi Spider, a program written by Ananzi will read through the submitted websites to determine if it fits the inclusion criteria. Websites fitting this criteria will then be added into the search engine.

Once websites have been added into Ananzi, Internet surfers using the Ananzi search facility can find the websites by doing a simple search, such as typing in the words “web design”. The sites that were added into the directory will then be displayed in the search results, ready for the user to choose a website that can provide the user with the best information or service that he / she is looking for.

Interesting features Ananzi has implemented includes the Directory search as well as the international search. Ananzi also provides the user with a quick look at the latest exchange rates, the weather forecast, the lotto as well as important events such as the latest news headlines, either from the South African news papers or BBC. Sports news is also a must and the headlines are listed on the home page below the general news headlines, coming straight from 365 Sport.

In addition to the important information, Ananzi (ananzi.co.za) also provides information on the latest shopping specials and has several portals where people can surf to if they are looking for something specific. Portals such as these includes games, travel, sms, chat groups, forums, online auctions, dating, movies, motoring, lifestyle and even road maps. Websites listed here have good quality content and helps the searcher to find good and usable information on topics researched.

Ananzi has recently implemented banner adds and popups on their website to help clients achieve optimal web traffic to their websites.

“In the past, large advertising agencies have been recullant on to take advantage of advertising on the Internet” said Mark Buwalda, and went on to comment that “this kind of advertising has proven to be very successful”.

The future of Ananzi is full of new developments in the pipeline. Mark Buwalda, said earlier this year “We want to be in the position where we provide our users with the best possible experience through harnessing the best of breed solutions”.

Ananzi has started to work its way through to being the Biggest Search Engine and Portal of South Africa, and together with strategic partnerships has already set up enhancements to the international search feature and a games channel, email dial up connections, voice over IP and email to SMS And FAX connections. It is the goal of Ananzi to provide a top class search engine, and bridge the gap between the individual and businesses by providing business presence on the Internet with acceptable levels of web traffic. “Ananzi has their sites firmly set on growing the business and adding value to their users” said Ronnie Apteker, a founding father of Internet Solutions.