Your Mamma.com (NASDAQ:MAMA) dresses your portfolio funny. The self-proclaimed "mother of all search engines" produced yet another dud of a quarter, with revenues falling by 35%. The search-engine specialist lost $0.20 a share, reversing a modest profit from last year's second-quarter showing.

However, after the company announced a partnership with Infospace (NASDAQ:INSP) that will help beef up the company's paid-search revenues, the volatile stock was ticked a little higher last night.

Yes, paid search is great. The problem with contextual search is that many of the smaller players, such as Miva (NASDAQ:MIVA) and LookSmart (NASDAQ:LOOK), don't have the marketing muscle -- or market credibility -- that the big boys do. In offering to duplicate Infospace's paid-search results and sharing in the profits, it's a win-win situation.

That's why investors got so excited about GuruNet (NASDAQ:ANSW) when it abandoned its stance on treating Answers.com as a premium research site and decided to open up the responses to freeloaders who would then consume relevant search ads provided by Google (NASDAQ:GOOG). Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Google dominate the marketing budgets of text-based sponsors, though Microsoft and Infospace aren't exactly slouches.

The inventory of high-priced ads dries up when you settle for lower tiers, and that's why companies like Infospace, Google, and Yahoo! can create symbiotic relationships with smaller players like Mamma.

This doesn't mean that Mamma should now be a hot commodity. That will take time and a little effort. Let's see whether it's able to grow the top line and get back into the black first. However, when that does happen, it will be a company worth noticing. The company is packing roughly $2 a share in cash on its balance sheet, and it isn't really trading for much more than that these days. The company has had its fair share of demons in the past. It has had to contend with lawsuits, losses, and even a brief stint as the apple of Mark Cuban's eye.

So, no, your Mamma is no Google. Your Mamma is no Infospace, either. But if it knows how to shake the right hands and win over the skeptics, those companies can come with some pretty long coattails.

Some more stories that Mamma used to tell:

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz loves his mamma. He does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this story. The Fool has a disclosure policy. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.