Its difficult to gauge the quality of the engine itself at this point with so little content in it.
What I can say is that even remotely presenting the system as a general purpose internet search engine like the UI from https://searchmysite.net/ does is going to give people the wrong idea and make them think the system is bad. To start with I'd suggest adding the number of sites indexed to the main search page.
I also think that the https://searchmysite.net/ portal will likely never be a destination. I'd suggest trying to promote it differently, offer a service service for OG internet sites, they opt-in to the service because they want a search widget they can embed on their site that has filter to search just that site or all OG sites. Having website categories would also help so people could search across tech blogs, or aquarium, or bowling sites, etc. Basically the old web ring idea but powered by search instead of just browsing a list.
Since there is a chicken and egg scenario - What you really need are people that think Google sucks that are invested in a niche and want to build a search ring out. The "only sites submitted by verified site owners" restriction needs to go, you want good curation but this is just too restrictive. I also think "downranks results containing adverts" is too restrictive, switch that to "downranks results containing excessive adverts and SEO spam".
Its difficult to gauge the quality of the engine itself at this point with so little content in it.
What I can say is that even remotely presenting the system as a general purpose internet search engine like the UI from https://searchmysite.net/ does is going to give people the wrong idea and make them think the system is bad. To start with I'd suggest adding the number of sites indexed to the main search page.
I also think that the https://searchmysite.net/ portal will likely never be a destination. I'd suggest trying to promote it differently, offer a service service for OG internet sites, they opt-in to the service because they want a search widget they can embed on their site that has filter to search just that site or all OG sites. Having website categories would also help so people could search across tech blogs, or aquarium, or bowling sites, etc. Basically the old web ring idea but powered by search instead of just browsing a list.
Since there is a chicken and egg scenario - What you really need are people that think Google sucks that are invested in a niche and want to build a search ring out. The "only sites submitted by verified site owners" restriction needs to go, you want good curation but this is just too restrictive. I also think "downranks results containing adverts" is too restrictive, switch that to "downranks results containing excessive adverts and SEO spam".