UK-based Simonseeks made a reasonably big splash in June this year when it launched, mostly because it looks better than your average review site, got a decent run with the PR, and is the brainchild of the co-founder of Moneysupermarket (and by extension, Travelsupermarket).
Four months on and its latest initiative is to aggregate and review flight meta search providers for short-haul trips, each of which provides a revenue stream to Simonseeks, as well as having an exclusive white label widget from another provider (currently Kayak).
Confused? Probably.
The principle behind the site (reviews of products, destinations etc, provided by experts and users) remains, but in the case of flights its has split the service into a number of areas.
For example, Simonseeks "editor" Nick Trend lists two sites for Checking the Options (Flightmapping, AirlineDestinations), four for Search Fare Comparison Sites (Kayak, Dohop, TravelSupermarket, Skyscanner), another six for Other Options (lastminute.com, Expedia, Opodo, Travelrepublic, AirFlights, Ebookers) and four for the charter flight boys (First Choice, Thomson, Thomas Cook, Monarch).
Each provider has a review and pays Simonseeks if a user clicks through to its own search engine. This is either a stroke of genius or really nothing of the sort as the click values might be small - not counting the potentially low volumes during the launch phase.
Meanwhile, Kayak is the provider of the fully functioning flight search widget on the site. This, commercial director Chris Nixon, brother of founder Simon, says will change regularly as they try out different providers.
Nixon admits it's "early days" but says they are "very pleased" with progress so far.
Problems at the outset, when users were asked to submit reviews to the site but were finding that it took over a week to see the content online, have been reigned in, Nixon promises. Reviews (reaching 2,100 this week), on average, now take around 48 hours to go live, mostly because each goes through a rather traditional editing process.
Where Simonseeks has achieved a fair degree of success is with its "celebrity" postings. Celebrity guides penned by the likes of mum's favourite Sir Cliff Richard, Jim Kerr (Simple Minds) and Raymond Blanc(Michelin-star chef) have all found their way to mainstream media and magazine sites - an initiative which has led to exposure and valuable SEO for Simonseeks.