Will Edison (Teoma) Deliver On Its Promises In Search Technology?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 30 of May , 2007 at 9:37 am

(Source) (1) Direct Hit and Teoma were the original social search engines.
- Direct Hit which was purchased back in 1999 by Ask, uses click data to determine relevancy for rank. So the more clicks, the higher the click popularity, the higher a page would rank.
- Teoma uses hubs and authorities to determine relevancy. In a sense, it uses the “wisdom of the crowds” to determine relevancy and show the best results they can.

(2) Apostolos explained in his presentation this morning that they will be combining the best of both Direct Hit and Teoma into one engine.

(3) Apostolos also explained that they have been tagging for three plus years. So for example, if you do a search at Ask.com, that search query you used, will be associated with the pages you click on Ask.com. So if you search on “cars” and click on the first result, the first result will be tagged as “cars” behind the scenes.

I’m not sure I want a search engine that delivers the most popular results. If I want to know specific information about a topic then relevancy is more important than popularity. If Ask.com is going to compete with Google, I don’t know how this technology is going to help them do that. It seems it will do more to make them competitive with Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon.

It’s not that I’m against social search at all. I’m real big on it, actually. But the reason Google has won the search engine war is because it doesn’t try to be a social search engine. It isn’t one. Its link popularity model is a way of ranking web pages for the purpose of helping searchers find relevant information. It sounds to me like Ask.com’s click popularity model is more about pinpointing what is popular among users, which is fine, but if that is the intent then analysts need to stop saying Ask.com is in fourth or fifth place in search engines and start comparing it to Redding and Digg instead.

It is difficult to speculate just what Edison will deliver based on the above comments by Apostolos Gerasoulis. Teoma, if you remember back that far, is the search engine that powered Ask Jeeves; that is, after it was acquired by Ask.com. The reason Ask Jeeves failed as a search personality is because searchers weren’t really interested in the kind of technology that was being offered. Sure, it was cute for a little while, but in the end Google kicked butt with its link crawling technology while Ask Jeeves and his non-specific returns failed to capture enough imaginations to keep it going long term.

Many people still like Teoma. They swear by its Subject-Specific Popularity. I don’t know why. The idea is to rank a web page based on its the number of subject-specific relevance of inbound links. Here’s what Rusty Brick says (in 2004), quoting Teoma executives:

They write, “picture yourself in your garage, in front of the opened hood of your severely out-of-commission pick-up truck. You need help with this major repair, and you can either ask your uncle, who owns two cars but has never held a wrench in his life and happens to be visiting (similar to using other leading search technologies) or you could phone your best friend, who has a degree in applied mechanics and builds automobiles from the ground up in his spare time (similar to Subject-Specific Popularity). The choice is quite clear.”

There’s just one problem with this kind of logic. First, Google does the same thing but it’s only one of hundreds of criteria they use to rank web pages. It’s not the only one, and certainly not the primary one, though it is important. But the problem with the above logic is if I used a search engine based on it then I wouldn’t go to the library to find a book on auto mechanics when I wanted to work on my own car.

Ideally, if I have an automobile problem then I’ll take my vehicle to a trained mechanic to work on it. That’s not an option with search engines. There isn’t a search engine, for instance, that will change my spark plugs for me when I need a tune up. But I can go to any search engine and type in “change spark plug” or “automobile tune up” and, I hope, receive instructions on how to do that. I’d be more likely to get what I want if I type “how to tune up a car,” or “how to change spark plugs.” The point is, the search engine is like a library; their function is to catalog information. If I want to find relevant information on a particular subject then I want to do that with a search engine that is qualified to offer what I want - that is, the one that is best at cataloging information. They must be, first and foremost, information cataloging experts.

Has Teoma proven they are experts in cataloging information? No. That’s why they are not in first place among search engines. Has Google? Yes, for the most part. That’s why they are most popular among search engines. So, when it comes to search technology, I want a search engine that can deliver on relevance more so than on popularity. If I want the most popular results then I’ll go to a social search site like Digg, Technorati, or Reddit. It seems that Ask.com wants to compete in both markets and I don’t see how they will do either all that effectively. But, as they say, the future will tell.

And one more thing, what good is tagging if it is done “behind the scenes?” If you tag it, please tag it so I can see it. That way I learn something and the tag becomes useful to me. I can own it. I can use it. If it is behind the scenes then I must trust you an awful lot to not make a mistake. I’m not sure I can do that. If I could, we’d all be surfing Ask.com, not Google.

Does all this mean I am anti-Ask.com? Nope. I just want them to offer search technology that helps me find what I want. In a word, the verdict on Edison is still out.

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