Ask Jeeves is preparing to release a related-search feature that it hopes will relieve Web searchers from the burden of repeatedly refining their queries. Executives from the Oakland, Calif., company demonstrated a prototype of the feature this week during the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference here. It will expand on an existing related-categories function by offering categories of search-term suggestions that both narrow and broaden a query. The expanded feature is expected to go live on the search site within the next few weeks, said Apostolos Gerasoulis, executive vice president of research and labs at Ask Jeeves. The company will first make it available for Web searches, but eventually plans to add the option to vertical search areas such as image search.
To deliver related queries, Ask Jeeves is tapping into the clustering technology built into its Teoma search engine. "We're trying to improve the [search] technology and provide a differentiator from the rest of the industry," said Gerasoulis, a co-founder of Teoma. "We wanted to focus on quality that is very different from anyone else."
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News source: eWeek
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