Teoma 2.0 Unveils Improved Search Engine Capabilities

Major points from the announcement:

Improved Relevance

Ask Jeeves, having upgraded to Teoma 2.0 search results in the fourth quarter of 2002, has reported significant improvement in their user statistics. According to statistics from Ask Jeeves, the number of times a user picks a search result has increased by 22 percent and site abandonment has decreased by 28 percent.

Chris Sherman and Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch ran a report in November 2002 showing the results of their test on the ability of various search engines to find the "ideal" search result page. Ask Jeeves received a grade of "B-", but showed enough improvement after further tests to receive a grade of "A." This was the result of the integration of Teoma 2.0.

According to Search Engine Watch:

"In rechecking our work, we noticed some significant improvements in Ask Jeeves results -- enough to boost the search engine's score firmly into the "A" range. The Jeeves/Teoma crew had no knowledge of our tests, so the improvements were due to a quiet upgrade that we learned about later."

More Communities

Teoma's focus is on improving traditional page ranking methods by determining the authority of a site, in addition to its relevancy. To determine the authority or quality of a site's content, a community-based approach, known as Subject-Specific Popularity is used. Instead of just counting the number of links to a site, a site's level of authority is determined by the number of same-subject pages that reference it.

"Teoma’s revolutionary approach to organizing and analyzing the Web is built on a completely different premise than any other search engine on the market," said Paul Gardi, general manager of Teoma. "The statistical improvements we’re seeing in relevance as we grow, proven by blind taste-tests on partner sites, are an exciting hint at what the future holds for this sophisticated technology."

Web-Based Spell Check

Teoma’s Spell Check technology helps users improve their search by offering corrections to misspelled search terms. If the spell check technology identifies a misspelled term, it will display a corrected spelling at the top of the results page. For example, searching for "stamp colectors" brings up a results page with "Did you mean: stamp collectors?" at the top. Users can simply click the corrected spelling of the term provided to help improve their results.

Dynamic Descriptions

In the search results, the description used for each page shows the the context of the search terms as they appear on the page. This is helpful in quickly scanning the results for strong matches to a search term.

Advanced Search Tools

Advanced Search Tools are available and offer the following search options:

-Search by exact phrase
-Include or exclude words or phrases
-Search for the phrase anywhere on the page, in the page title, or in the URL
-Search using 10 languages
-Search within a specific domain or site
-Search by Geographic region
-Date page was modified

Expanded Index

Teoma reports that is has indexed more than 500 million URLs. According to Teoma, a major increase is planned for 2003.