Automotive classifieds site Carsales has nabbed a big-name customer for an internally-developed search engine, revealing Pickles Auctions has signed up to use the platform in its own online operations.
The Ryvuss search engine was born out of an inability to find an existing platform that suited Carsales' needs when an incumbent licensed search enginge was reaching the end of its useful life.
After searching high and low, Carsales CIO Ajay Bhatia in 2013 made the decision to build his own search engine, given the integral nature of search to the company's business - 80 percent of the site's 1.4 million monthly visitors use search extensively.
Bhatia is now beginning to reap the benefits of his 18 month effort, both internally and externally.
Pickles Auctions is one of a number of companies signing up to use the Ryvuss engine, alongside the likes of Brazil's WebMotors.
The business faced a similar problem as Carsales - it was unable to find a search function that was fit for its purpose.
Pickles hosts more than 300 physical and online auctions nationally per month. Most of the items up for sale are listed online, and more than 40 percent are sold to online buyers - making search an increasingly important functionality.
“We consider our website as a core strategic tool and the window into our business,” Pickles CIO Claudio Salinas said in a statement.
After last year implementing the Boostrap framework for its website, Salinas turned his attention to search capability - "arguably the most important element of an e-commerce website", he said.
He narrowed potential products down to a short list and conducted proof of concepts, ultimately opting for Carsales' Ryvuss following a short pilot.
"Put simply Ryvuss is a feature rich, high performance and flexible application search engine that will provide Pickles with a huge leap forward in our search capability," Salinas said.
“Ryvuss will drive major search enhancements in a short implementation period. What we wanted to avoid was a major search project consuming the development team for an extended duration, Ryvuss will help us achieve this," Salinas said.
The company accesses Ryvuss through a set of APIs under a perpetual license for the product.
A Pickles spokesperson has been contacted for further comment.
Bhatia was awarded the 2015 Retail Benchmark award for the Ryvuss project.
