Mirago

Mirago started life as a development initiative in 1997, within a company called Compsoft who developed high performance database engines. Databases are of course, all about storing, indexing and retrieving data. The Mirago team took those core techniques and applied them to mass unstructured data on the Internet. This development project culminated in the launch of a robot generated UK search index, closely followed by indexes for France, Germany and several other European countries. With that launch of service in 1998, Mirago claimed the accolade of becoming the first European Search Engine. During the next couple of years Mirago developed its own CPM and PPC Ad platform to monetise its web indexes. Rather than trying to establish itself as an end user website, Mirago offered its indexes topped by its own PPC advertisers to third party search sites. The first two to adopt Mirago search feeds were Ask Jeeves and Infospace. Mirago quickly extended its partner network and developed its platform to encompass other areas such as contextual advertising. The team which developed the platform worked in close association with the sales and account management teams, so the platform benefited immensely from invaluable advertiser, partner and account management feedback. As a recognition of the company's innovation during that time, Mirago received an Honourable Mention at the 2004 SearchEngineWatch awards event in New York, with specific mention of two features, notably traffic source exclusion and dayparting. Danny Sullivan referred to these global innovations in his speech, saying "Mirago has lead the industry in both these fronts, and we'd like other paid listing providers to catch up!" In both 2005 and 2006 Mirago was named in the top 20 of The Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100, which featured Britain's fastest growing private technology companies. It was one of only three companies to appear in the top 20 for both those years. In 2006 Mirago decided on a strategic shift... rather than going head to head with Google and Yahoo in the syndicated partner space, Mirago started offering its performance based media platform on a white label basis to major publishers. Early adopters included Yell.com and Associated Newspapers. During the next few years Mirago develop a new 'unified' M3 platform. Up until then, each platform had been built using its own dedicated hardware, bespoke software, monitoring and disaster recovery facilities. In 2010 a new 'cloud based' platform was launched, which allows Publishers and Media Networks to quickly and easily deploy their own 'virtual platform', which is a secure 'instance' of the main underlying platform.