An Australian Web search start-up initially attracted such high traffic volumes it was forced to switch service providers after its first provider was unable to cope, its top executive said today.

However, the company is yet to secure a deal with a paid listings provider, a crucial element of its business strategy.

Mooter Search chief executive officer, Liesel Capper, said interest in the search engine -- sparked initially by news reports and postings to Web forums -- had slowed site's response-times during the early rush.

Capper said that while Mooter's technical teething problems had been the source of some user complaint, the majority of feedback reagrding the search engine was "overwhelmingly positive".

"People were saying 'we wished that this had been done before' -- that sort of comment," said Capper.

Mooter's search technology attempts to anticipate the Web user's informational needs by automating some psychological analysis of the user's behaviour.

Rather than serving up a list of all possible links including relevant keywords or phrases and leaving the user to sort through them, Mooter sorts information into clusters by concept.

But while the search engine is attracting curiosity, Capper says she is yet to make progress on finding a paid listings partner, an important step toward monetising the venture.

Mooter Search -- funded by a combination of both government and private funds -- is relying on pay-per-click advertising for its revenue. The company is anticipating an advertiser demand for more "discriminating traffic".

Overture, which recently launched a local operation, and LookSmart Australia are understood to be at the top of the list of prospective paid listings providers.

U.S. based search giant Google also launched into the Australian market softly last year, setting up a sales operation in Sydney to sell paid searches in the local market.

However, Capper has left open the possibility that the company may reap some revenue from technologies it has developed for the site.

"Another thing we have been getting a fair bit of interest about is not so much the clustering but the dynamic personalisation which we didn't actually make a big deal about," said Capper.

Capper said the dynamic personalisation technology is in its testing phase. She was tight-lipped about details of how the technology works and the nature of the interest taken in the technology.

Interest in personalised search technology is intensifying. Yahoo! has experimented with search personalisation technology on its portal.

Google snapped up search personalisation technology start-up Kaltix last month in line with its strategy of driving towards personalised searches.

Speaking to ZDNet Australia earlier this year, Yahoo!'s senior producer Peter Crowe said the emergence of new search technologies plays a significant role in destabilising the industry and ensuring the matrix of partnerships between search engine companies remains complex.

Mooter has launched its search portal during a turbulent time for an industry in which reminders that fortunes can change unexpectedly and rapidly are easy to find.

Google the dominant algorithmic search provider rose from obscurity in a relatively short time. By contrast LookSmart stock lost around 65 percent overnight after losing its partnership with Microsoft's U.S. online portal venture MSN.

Yahoo!, which recently acquired Overture, has revealed that it is trialling the search engine of its wholly owned subsidiary Inktomi in Australia with a view to replacing Google's algorithmic search.

However, with Web advertising revenues expected to grow to US$2.1 billion next year, that latest omen that the industry is about to be drastically re-shaped is speculation that Microsoft will build search facilities into the next version of Windows.

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