Carsales.com has picked up its second international customer, South Korean automotive classifieds giant, SK Encar, for its locally-developed search engine.
SK Encar is rolling out the proprietary platform – Ryvuss Search – which powers search for the majority of Carsales’ websites, auction and valuation group Pickles Auctions; and Brazilian company, WebMotors.
SK Encar COO, Henry Park, said the company wanted its site to be powered by a search platform optimised for searching vehicles. The company is the largest automotive classified website in South Korea, which lists more than 1 million cars every year and attracts around 400,000 unique visitors per day on its online and mobile sites.
“Ryvuss offers us the flexibility and functionality to improve the search experience for customers,” said Park. “Customers will be able to enjoy its faceted search and multi-select options to look for cars. They can also see more pages in the same space of time due to quicker page loading times."
SK Encar IT team manager, Chris Ahn, said Ryvuss will reduce the time it takes for app developers to add new functionality.
“We expect to improve page performance by decreasing the page load time with the Ryvuss platform, so we can expect an increase in page views,” he said.
“Despite our initial concerns, Korean-language retrieval and higher price, the genuine strength of Ryvuss, just made the decision for us.”
Carsales’ CIO, Ajay Bhatia, said with a number of automotive clients already using Ryvuss, the company is on track to becoming the search platform of choice for automotive retailers around the world.
“Ryvuss Search offers the most relevant and compelling search features for online classifieds and retail sites around the world,” he said.
Ryvuss Search was the brainchild of Carsales’ VP of engineering, Michael Ridgway, and was first created for internal use across the company’s websites.
Development started in 2010 when Carsales’ users wanted to be able to search by multiple vehicle makes, models, and colours.
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