Online search is a massive multi-billion dollar industry. I would provide the actual revenue of Google's search division here if it weren't for the fact that central banks worldwide are printing so much money that these numbers are quickly becoming meaningless. Needless to say, Alphabet Inc. is raking in a lot of fiat from advertisers who are paying top dollar for your attention.

All those search queries over the years have made Google a very profitable company. Wouldn't it be nice if they shared some of that profit with us, the people who are providing the data?

Presearch, a search engine that's been in operation since November of 2017, is challenging the current power structure with a unique token model on the Ethereum blockchain that drives more value to both users and advertisers.

Token Rewards For Searching

The first attractive aspect of Presearch is how they reward users with tokens for their participation. Presearch pays 0.25 PRE tokens for each search query performed, and users can earn up to a maximum of 8 PRE tokens per 24 hour period. 

Once you have earned at least 1000 PRE tokens you can submit a request to withdraw them to an Ethereum wallet for safekeeping, or you can put them to use to start driving traffic to your online businesses and affiliate links. 

Staking Keywords With Your Tokens

The utility of the PRE tokens is what makes this project all the more intriguing, as you are able to stake them against certain keywords and display your own custom advertisements.

For example, let's say you have an online business tutoring Spanish. You could stake your PRE tokens against the keyword "spanish" which would display an ad on the results page whenever someone searched for that term. Alternatively, you could stake your tokens against a keyword like "crypto" and display an ad with your Binance affiliate link in it.

Let's login to Presearch to see what keywords have already been staked.

Presearch Keywords Dashboard

First of all you will need to sign up for a Presearch account using your email address.

Presearch offers some optional plugins for a variety of popular web browsers so that you can issue search queries directly from the address bar. If you don't feel like installing a plugin, you can simply set your homepage to Presearch on both your desktop and mobile web browsers.

Once you have created an account, you can visit the Presearch Keywords Dashboard to find out if a keyword has been staked. For starters, let's see if anyone has staked the keyword "bitcoin".

Sure enough, several people have bid on this one with the highest roller staking 1,291,000 PRE tokens against it (approximately worth 23k USD today). This individual has created a custom ad that includes their Bitmex referral link. It would be interesting to see how many clicks this ad is getting!

As you can see, it is also possible to stake a combination of keywords, such as "How to buy Bitcoin" or "bitcoin wallet". If someone searches for those exact phrases, the respective ads will be displayed.

Currently, only the ad of the person staking the highest amount appears in the search results. So if you wanted your ad to display when anyone searched "bitcoin", you would have to stake more than 1,291,000 PRE tokens to take the top spot. In the future, ads may be displayed in a round-robin fashion, in proportion to the amount of PRE each person has staked against a keyword. 

Now if we use Presearch to do a search on "bitcoin", we can see the ad on display:

By default, Presearch will direct queries to their own search engine, dsearch. In that case, the ad will appear as above. However if the user has selected a different search engine from the main page, the ad will appear for a few seconds before the query is redirected.

Let's lookup a keyword that may be less popular, but potentially profitable.

As you can see, the number of stakes against "matrix" is zero, meaning this keyword is available for the low price of 1000 PRE! Click the "Stake This" button to claim it. Now we need to enter details such as:

• Staking amount (at least 1000 PRE)
• Ad headline
• Description
• Ad Link URL (the URL to your website or affiliate link)

Once you have filled in the information, click the Next button.

That's it! You have successfully staked your first keyword! You can verify that your ad is being displayed by doing a quick search on your keyword at presearch.org. You will receive an email if someone else outbids (stakes higher) than you on this keyword.

You can now monitor your results from the keywords dashboard to see how many views and ad clicks you are getting.

If you want to withdraw your tokens or claim a different keyword, you can cancel your stake anytime from the keywords dashboard.  

Obtaining PRE Tokens

If you cannot wait several months to accumulate the 1000 tokens required to start staking, you can purchase them on the open market via exchanges like Kucoin. From there, you can withdraw the tokens directly to your Presearch account.

The Future

PRE tokens are currently on the Ethereum blockchain where they can be traded transparently and without censorship. Unfortunately, as it stands now, you must give up custody of your tokens and send them to Presearch in order to stake keywords.

I hope that in the future it is possible to stake keywords through smart contracts while still retaining ownership of the tokens, however that may require moving them to a blockchain that can handle the increased transaction load. Unless of course Ethereum manages to successfully upgrade to version 2.0 and provides the scalability that dapps such as Presearch require.

Conclusion

Keyword staking is a novel concept that may take some time to catch on, but the tokenomics of the model appear to be quite solid. People are incentivized to use the platform because they earn something (instead of nothing) for their searches. As the number of daily searches continue to rise, the demand to advertise on the platform should increase, thereby boosting the value of the token, in turn driving more users to the platform. 

I suspect this model of rewarding users directly for their efforts is likely to gain further traction in the coming months and years. For users, earning even a small amount (in fiat terms) for their time and effort is better than getting nothing at all. For advertisers, the ability to control ads and the transparency of keyword staking is very beneficial. It appears as though Presearch have carved themselves out a very interesting niche in the blockchain world!