Fifteen months ago, as the Star Tribune emerged from bankruptcy, it struck a deal with CarSoup for online auto advertising. The Strib killed its own site, which barely registered among local classified sites. In return, it received what one spokesman described as "hundreds of thousands of dollars" — more a concession than a game-changer.

Now, the Strib is striking out on its own again.

Tuesday morning, the Strib unveiled its own search engine ... and revamped advertising philosophy. Strib designers, helped by The Nerdery code-jockeys, present users with a simple "real language" search site (no drop-down menus, at least initially) of real-time used-car listings.

The links take shoppers directly to the dealer, seller or search engine page. (Yes, you could end up on CarSoup or Cars.com, depending.)

The Strib doesn't charge sellers or customers anything; it plans to make money selling display ads next to the search, like Google.

Will it produce more cash? "Well, we'll see," says Star Tribune digital boss Jim Bernard. "Whether or not we make more money is still to be determined, but for readers and dealers, we want to make it easier to go find a car."

This is supposed to dovetail with an easier-to-use full-site redesign coming in April. Bernard's hope is that if the Strib isn't a teeth-grinding experience, better traffic will mean more clicks will mean more money for journalists.

Still, as the previous in-house effort showed, the Star Tribune's huge news presence is no guarantee of online advertising success. CarSoup is a well-established brand with a TV partnership (Fox9). Will the Strib's function be so creamy that people actually think of it before CarSoup, AutoTrader, or similar efforts?

For Bernard, a key point is that the Strib owns the web-scraping software and the database that software produces. That will make it easier for the Strib to sell ads against results on multiple platforms (mobile, tablets, etc.) in various subsets, such as geography.

He says the engineering took about six weeks, a proof-of-concept that can be extended to other advertising "verticals" such as entertainment. For a time, the Strib preferred to be a mall for more sophisticated website operators. Now, it again wants to be a mall for shoppers and retailers.