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Are you tired of wasting your time sorting through millions of search engine results to find a few, good, relevant sites?

Tired of coming across pornography or other obnoxious web sites while sorting through search engine returns?

Want a better way to easily, quickly and safely find the best, most relevant sites on the web about anything?

WELL SO AM I, SO I DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Hi, my name is Randy Carr and I am the founder of RefSpot.com
(formerly ResearchSpot).

I built this web site after my senior citizen parents asked me to build them a web directory laid out like a Yellow Pages or Encyclopedia (something they grew up using) where they could find top sites about any subject, product, service, business or information they desired. They said it had to be easy to use, in a quick reference format and safe, i.e. no pornography, evil or hate filled sites. They said it should also be easy enough and safe enough for my daughter, their grand daughter, to use as the web was becoming her information and entertainment source.

They said they and many of their senior citizen friends didn't like or understand search engines as they often had to sort through millions of search engine results trying to find a few good, relevant sites. They also complained that different search engines returned different sites for the same word search. Worse they said they were horrified to find out that sometimes search engines return pornography disguised with normal sounding names or that came in as advertisements with the search returns.

So thinking how big could the web be, I set out to build them this directory figuring it would take maybe 5-6 months part-time (I had a full time job and young child). Unfortunately, I found out the web has Billions of pages and Tens of Millions of sites and more being added daily. So my project turned into first a year, then two and finally after 5 years, I realized I could never find all the top sites about all subjects, products and information by myself. I needed thousands or tens of thousands of other researchers helping me. Since I didn't win the lottery, wasn't rich and didn't know any venture capitalists, I realized I wasn't going to find tens of thousands of people who would work for free to help me build my site.

Answer to My Problem and My Prayers
Knowing I couldn't give up, especially since my daughter had entered school and was starting to use the internet, I had to find the answer. After about a three month break, where I spent a lot of time thinking and praying, God seemed to give me the perfect answer. I finally realized that the answer to building the perfect website was staring me in the face. For years, I have been using two giant human-edited web directories to help me find the best sites: Open Directory Project and Yahoo Directory. Combined, they had over 75, 000 human editors throughout the World who regularly reviewed, picked and published the top sites into their directories. By far they were the best on the web and yet neither directory gave all the best sites.

All I had to do was build a new web site home page combining these two great directories into easy sections where anyone could quickly, easily and safely (I wouldn't include any porn, evil or hate filled directories) link to top human-edited sites using a yellow pages or encyclopedia method of finding them. Best of all these 75,000 plus editors will constantly be adding and deleting sites to assure that only the biggest, best, most trafficked sites are included in their directories. (And I don't have to worry about paying them!)

So over the next year, I built my main Home Page and three other home page versions a Kid Safest Homepage, a Detailed Homepage for web newcomers and senior citizens, and a Business Education Homepage focused on business, career, investing and personal finance information and referrals to related products and services.

Most pages have the following sub-sections included:

Reference Directories which link to top reference sites, e.g. Ask Experts, Business & Legal Forms, Business & Company Research, Calculators, Dictionaries, Encyclopedias Language Translators, Maps, People Finders, Phone Books, Web Directories, Web Search Engines, and many more tools. If you still need a search engine, we also include the Google,
Answers, Open Directory and Yahoo Directory search engines all of which are in the "Safe Search Mode" which generally does not return pornography, evil or hate filled sites (although it is not a 100% perfect which is why we created the Kids Safest
page whose search engine and sites DO NOT include porn.)

Subjects & Industry Directories which include top consumer and business interest topics including: Animals & Pets, Art, Autos, Business, Cable & TV, Career & Jobs, Chat Rooms, Comedy & Humor, Computers & Technology, Email Post Cards, Entertainment, Family, Games, Health & Medical, Movies, Music, Radio, Webcams, and more.

News & Media Directories which includes local, national and world news, in various sub-topics including weather, business news, sports news, entertainment news, tech news and more. It also provides news from various media sources, most of which allow searching for articles by people, places, products, services, or other topics.

Shopping Guides which include top on and offline retailers, restaurants, theme parks, and other kinds of major product and service providers. Also included are consumer shopping aids including price comparison tools and shopping search engines.

Coming Soon:
In early 2008 we will give you the ability to make your own home page from our home page template where you can include not only our directories, but also all the top sites you find, pictures you like, and even other content of interest. Also, we plan on creating web chat sites where you can talk about the best sites or the news or anything of interest to you and your friends.

My Goals
My goals are to build a Christian based company that:
1. Provide an easy, fast and safe web reference tool where kids, seniors, adults, businesses, government agencies, churches, and nonprofits can learn, find information, have fun and interact while surfing the web and world,
2. Creates a nurturing work environment for all employees where they can learn, share, have fun, explore their creativity, help their fellow human beings in their web searching and be rewarded for their efforts;
3. Create ever-growing profits and wealth for all employees and stockholders and:
4. Create an ongoing, ever-growing revenue stream for churches, charities, and other worthy nonprofits, whereby a portion of all our profits will flow out to these entities as well as our site will help promote their companies and causes.

Thanks for Coming.
Please come back often and tell your friends, neighbors and relatives. If you have any ideas of how to make the site better or find a link to a section on Open Directory Project's or Yahoo's Directory that is offensive, Contact Us. Now, back to our "Home Page"

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