OptWizard
10-01-2002, 10:52/10:52AM
Take a peak...Looks like ask is using Teoma results within there results now...
Ask Jeeves now offers search results powered by Teoma, the search engine
that ask.com acquired in September 2001. In addition to Jeeves' familiar
results that feature a list of questions and sponsored links, Teoma search
results are featured under the heading "You may find my search results
helpful."
Teoma results replace those formerly provided by Direct Hit, another Ask
Jeeves property. Teoma results were quietly introduced on the ask.com
site on December 18th, and users have apparently liked what they've seen.
Since introducing Teoma results, Ask Jeeves has seen a 25 percent increase
in the number of times a user selects a search result on the Ask.com
results page, according to Steve Berkowitz, president of Ask Jeeves Web
Properties. Site abandonment has also decreased by 15 percent.
Teoma calculates relevance using link analysis to identify "communities"
on the web, and then determines which sites are the authorities within
those communities to find the best pages. It's similar to the way Google
works, but with some important differences. Briefly, whereas Google uses
the collective wisdom of the entire web to determine relevance, Teoma
tries to identify "local" authorities to help identify the best pages for
a particular topic.
Examining same subject pages that reference a site to determine its level
of authority in addition to relevance is referred to by the company as
Subject-Specific Popularity.
Since its acquisition by Ask Jeeves, Teoma has increased the size of its
index to 150 million documents. While this may seem like a small number
compared to the billions of pages claimed by Google, the company has a
different take on whether biggest is actually best.
"We think that we're going to get to a point where we've gone to the outer
limits of the web and have built a base of information to be able to
answer every query satisfactorily," said Paul Gardi, vice president of
search, Ask Jeeves. "Our goal is to build the dataset up until the point
where we're completely satisfied that we can answer every query."
What size web index will allow Teoma to achieve this goal? "We actually
don't know what the upper bound is," said Gardi. "We think that there's a
point where you've stopped finding useful information and you're crawling
for the sake of crawling."
Not all Teoma features have been integrated into Ask Jeeves. The company
continues to maintain the Teoma search engine as a separate site, and
plans to move it out of beta some time in the second quarter. Despite
using the same index, results will be different on the Ask Jeeves and
Teoma sites.
As a searcher, which site should you use?
"When you ask people whether they come to ask.com to search or ask
questions, they say to ask questions," said Berkowitz. "We see that there
are many different types of users that like different ways to get
information."
This means that if you like the question and answer approach offered by
Ask Jeeves, you should continue to use it, and take advantage of the
additional Teoma results when you find them useful.
If you are a relatively skilled searcher, your best bet will likely be
using Teoma directly rather than Ask Jeeves. The reason is that queries
are pre-processed by Ask Jeeves before being sent to Teoma, and results
served at Ask Jeeves are filtered for adult content.
"The goal ultimately is to say that Teoma.com is the place to go for the
driver searcher, the person who wants to get the
best information quickly
and cleanly," said Berkowitz.
This is from the SEARCH DAY NEWSLETTER
Ask Jeeves now offers search results powered by Teoma, the search engine
that ask.com acquired in September 2001. In addition to Jeeves' familiar
results that feature a list of questions and sponsored links, Teoma search
results are featured under the heading "You may find my search results
helpful."
Teoma results replace those formerly provided by Direct Hit, another Ask
Jeeves property. Teoma results were quietly introduced on the ask.com
site on December 18th, and users have apparently liked what they've seen.
Since introducing Teoma results, Ask Jeeves has seen a 25 percent increase
in the number of times a user selects a search result on the Ask.com
results page, according to Steve Berkowitz, president of Ask Jeeves Web
Properties. Site abandonment has also decreased by 15 percent.
Teoma calculates relevance using link analysis to identify "communities"
on the web, and then determines which sites are the authorities within
those communities to find the best pages. It's similar to the way Google
works, but with some important differences. Briefly, whereas Google uses
the collective wisdom of the entire web to determine relevance, Teoma
tries to identify "local" authorities to help identify the best pages for
a particular topic.
Examining same subject pages that reference a site to determine its level
of authority in addition to relevance is referred to by the company as
Subject-Specific Popularity.
Since its acquisition by Ask Jeeves, Teoma has increased the size of its
index to 150 million documents. While this may seem like a small number
compared to the billions of pages claimed by Google, the company has a
different take on whether biggest is actually best.
"We think that we're going to get to a point where we've gone to the outer
limits of the web and have built a base of information to be able to
answer every query satisfactorily," said Paul Gardi, vice president of
search, Ask Jeeves. "Our goal is to build the dataset up until the point
where we're completely satisfied that we can answer every query."
What size web index will allow Teoma to achieve this goal? "We actually
don't know what the upper bound is," said Gardi. "We think that there's a
point where you've stopped finding useful information and you're crawling
for the sake of crawling."
Not all Teoma features have been integrated into Ask Jeeves. The company
continues to maintain the Teoma search engine as a separate site, and
plans to move it out of beta some time in the second quarter. Despite
using the same index, results will be different on the Ask Jeeves and
Teoma sites.
As a searcher, which site should you use?
"When you ask people whether they come to ask.com to search or ask
questions, they say to ask questions," said Berkowitz. "We see that there
are many different types of users that like different ways to get
information."
This means that if you like the question and answer approach offered by
Ask Jeeves, you should continue to use it, and take advantage of the
additional Teoma results when you find them useful.
If you are a relatively skilled searcher, your best bet will likely be
using Teoma directly rather than Ask Jeeves. The reason is that queries
are pre-processed by Ask Jeeves before being sent to Teoma, and results
served at Ask Jeeves are filtered for adult content.
"The goal ultimately is to say that Teoma.com is the place to go for the
driver searcher, the person who wants to get the
best information quickly
and cleanly," said Berkowitz.
This is from the SEARCH DAY NEWSLETTER