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Teoma Aims To Kill Google
gwernol writes: "SFGate.com has an interesting article on the relaunch of Teoma's search engine. They are trying to topple Google as the leading search engine. If their technology delivers on its promise then it will at least be some real competition for Google which can only be a good thing."
I was a beta tester for this search engine ... rewarded beta testers with a gift certificate at amazon.com. I wasn't all that impressed to be honest. It was fast but the result-set produced wasn't anything spectacular, and the new search features they added were of the "cute and fuzzy" variety. Nothing that would really yield much productivity. They added an associated topics section, and some visual cues to get to information, but given the choice between that and Google, I'd choose Google any day.
Does no one read the article? They are rolling out a new version (which the article was about) tomorrow at 5pm PST! The site that is there now is using presumably months/years old technology. Anyone who's posted so far complaining about some search on Teoma is being fairly silly.
That said it doesn't sound like the new version will topple google either.
From the Teoma search page:
"Teoma delivers three types of search results Web Pages: Authoritative sites relevant to your search term. Web Pages by Topic: Top result pages are grouped based on their topics. Experts' Links: Pages contain directories of links for related general subjects."
Okay, great... but where's the "advanced search" option (such as Google's, at this page)? I know this is a "beta version" of the Teoma site; maybe their advanced search functionality isn't ready for prime time just yet. Or, maybe I've got it all wrong... do they believe their engine is good enough to eliminate the need for advanced search functionality?
Also of potential interest are a couple of links at the bottom of each search results page. These links let you try your search on AskJeeves.com or DirectHit.com. As I understand it, they're gunning for Google as their biggest competition, but it seems somewhat odd that they'd include links to what most people (at least people I know) consider to be inferior search engines instead.
Just a couple of thoughts
If they want to challenge Google, they have a long way to go.
.
They charge for submitting a URL. $30.00US for the first one. That could impeed on the search engine's success.
m l
References:
http://static.wc.ask.com/docs/addjeeves/Submit.ht
http://ask.ineedhits.com/
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
Are they going to do the same thing google is doing, and let companies pay to have their pages come up in results more frequently than others?
Gaaaah! How many #$@#!$-ing times is this particular piece of FUD going to be spread?? Google DOESN'T do this. Google does allow companies to pay to have their text ads rated higher for given keyword searches, but this doesn't influence the stupid search results!
Sorry, Renraku; nothing personal. I'm sure you weren't purposefully trying to spread misinformation: you were probably misinformed yourself (most likely by the Slashdot article that started all of this paranoia). But I've seen this one enough that it's really starting to get to me...
Does no one read the article? They are rolling out a new version (which the article was about) tomorrow at 5pm PST! The site that is there now is using presumably months/years old technology
Um, the site up right now is in BETA. And the article clearly states "After spending the past six months perfecting the technology, Gerasoulis and his development team on Monday evening will roll out a souped-up search engine".
Are you saying that the current beta was discarded "months/years" ago and no one remembered to take it down, and that the "new" search engine to debut tommorrow didn't go through a beta stage first?
Check out mozilla. The address bar _is_ a google search engine :)
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
Teoma is sluggish, but that can be fixed with money.
Inserting tongue slightly in cheek:
;-)
I searched on keywords that represent products that I sell on-line. In each and every case, my page was #1 on the list.
I suppose this may change when they go "live and in color", tomorrow... but, for now, I can live with it
-Eldurbarn
Here's my simple study. I type in words at each search engine, and look at how many results I get. I rank them in order of most to least results, and I've put my (sometimes comical) comments below the results from each query.
;-). No, really, AllTheWeb has its uses. Its a techie search engine with lots of neat advanced features, and I love the FTP / MP3 search options.
QUERY 1: LESBIAN
AltaVista: 29,176,797
Google: 11,600,000
WiseNut: 8,282,738
AllTheWeb: 1,166,487
Teoma: 442,000
Congrats to the pervs at AltaVista for having nearly 30 million results on "lesbian"! The jack-offs at Google come in a distant second at nearly 12 million results on Lesbians. Nice job to the occasional wankers at WiseNut on their 8-million results. AllTheWeb? Only 1 million results? Don't you guys jack off at all? What right does a search engine have to call itself AllTheWeb if they only get 1 million results on a query for "lesbian"? Teoma gets the "nice try" pat on the back. Grow some nuts, Teoma, then come back and play with the big boys.
Now, lets try something a little bit more sparse.
QUERY 2: Michael Jordan.
AltaVista: 27,980,822
Google: 1,320,000
Teoma: 245,000
AllTheWeb: 205,054
WiseNut: 72,998
Again, AltaVista comes out on top at 28 million. This is questionable, but probably accurate. AltaVista has really indiscriminate searching technology, and doesn't try to eliminate redundant or very similar pages (or subpages) like Google does. But, strictly by the numbers, again, Google comes in a distant second at 1.3 million. Teoma actually comes in somewhat respectibally this time at 2.5 hundred thousand; still, its not in the same league as Google or AltaVista. AllTheWeb again comes up short and dissapointing, especially given its name. Guys, don't call your engine AllTheWeb if it only returns 1/4 as many results as does Google! WiseNut apparently isn't too wise at only 72 thousand results for MJ. Come on guys, get with it. MJ's may have been retired for 2 years, but he's still big news.
On to something a bit more obscure:
QUERY 3: Leilani Rios
For those of you who don't know, Leilani Rios is a stripper who was kicked off her run team for stripping to pay her way through college. What BS. This is a recent development; so this query sort of tests for how updated the search engines are.
Google: 1,870
AllTheWeb: 723
AltaVista: 567
WiseNut: 426
Teoma: 74
Well, I can hardly say this is surprising. AltaVista (~600) is finally dethroned, Google revealed as king (~2k). While I'm here, I should eat some crow for earlier criticisms of AllTheWeb (~700). Perhaps they don't deserve the title AllTheWeb, but 723 results on this query isn't bad. Still, not even half of what Google returned. WiseNut again occupies the low mediocrity position with 426 results. Teoma...Teoma Teoma Teoma, coming in with a sorry 74 results. Come on guys, this is recent news, but its also big news. The girl was in PlayBoy magazine for christ sake! Again, Teoma, spend some time growing up, grow some balls. Then come back and play with the big boys.
In the interests of fairness, I'll do another query for a person who recently became news.
QUERY 4: Katie Sierra
AltaVista: 68,416
Google: 37,200
AllTheWeb: 25,447
WiseNut: 21,184
Teoma: 4,740
Welp, AltaVista's back on top again at 68k, though I doubt the validity of it. Remember, AV doesn't sort out very similar pages, as does Google. Google comes in second at 37k. AllTheWeb, again, not bad, though certainly not "all the web" at 25k. WiseNut again comes in on the short side of mediocracy. Teoma...welp, you're beginning to see the pattern. Come on guys, this is sorry. I might find more results than that for Katie Sierra by just searching slashdot! (;-).
Next is a personal query for a website of mine that's minor and unfinished:
QUERY 5: "Here is a listing of links to several sites that either argue against"
I used quotes this time because I'm specifically seeing if these search engines will produce a result for my web page (or one with those exact words, if any other has those exact words).
Google: 1
AllTheWeb: 1
Others: 0
Welp, what can I say? Google/AllTheWeb apparently appreciates even my trivial, marginal, unfinished thoughts. How dare AltaVista, WiseNut, and Teoma not have my trivial unfinished web page catalogued! No, just joking. I didn't really expect any search engine to have my page in it. But Google/AllTheWeb gave me a pleasant, ego-stroking surprise. This was what really impressed me with Google/AllTheWeb. What actually happened is I forgot about my web site (that is, its address) and typed in "pessimistic views" at Google(then today at AllTheWeb)...the first web page listed looked familiar and I wondered why until I realized it was a page I created years ago. Kudos to Google and AllTheWeb for including the "little guy".
Well, that's it. You guys get the picture. Google is still king. AltaVista does a good job at faking it, but we all know that AV doesn't distinguish well between duplicate or very similar pages. AllTheWeb, impressive, but certainly not all of the web. WiseNut, I've never heard of before, but you did half-ass. Teoma...you came in 2nd in ONE category. Not even 1st. But, not being on the bottom rung just didn't feel right to you. Feel good to be back home? Here's my preferences for search engines and why:
1. Google. Provides a lotta search results, well organized, and many great features.
2. AllTheWeb. Before I discovered Google, you were my girl, but now your just my whore
3. AltaVista. AV, though I'm sure you have (metaphorically speaking) fake breasts and a pushup braw, I still have a fond spot for you. Before I discovered AllTheWeb and Google, you were my girl. But now your more like the ex-wife who keeps on nagging me. AltaVista's kinda the thing I goto when I'm feeling nostalgic for my first car. Not really much use, but still got a little soft spot for ya.
4. WiseNut. Never heard of this search engine before and there's obviously a reason for that. WiseNut seems to be, to me, the very definition of mediocracy. I'll keep an eye on you and see if anything good comes of you, but I'm about as hopeful for that as I am that Enron execs will be found "innocent".
5. Teoma. Well, you did pretty shitty in every category. But you've got an excuse -- your the new kid on the block. The 16-year old girl who's mouth is so small you can't quite take in a whole . No, seriously. Teoma has some potential. I like the way I get fast results, and I like the no-nonsense interface. I think the more advanced way in which you organize things. I'll put you on my list of possibly up-and-coming search engines. But don't kid yourself yet. You're nowhere near the league of Google.
Despite my harsh, sometimes funny, tone in this post, all these engines are good. But "good" (i.e., AltaVista, Teoma, WiseNut), just doesn't cut it when you have GREAT engines like AllTheWeb, and when you have THE ENGINE, aka Google.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Be patient. Caching takes up a lot of storage, which costs a lot of money, which Teoma doesn't have yet.
Their "jobs" link mentions a variety of technologies, including LAPACK. LAPACK is a collection of scientific functions (there's a C version, CLAPACK, but LAPACK is FORTRAN). My guess is they're using, among other things, techniques related to latent semantic indexing (LSI) and vector space models (VSM) for their ranking.
Unless you're an Information Retrieval Wienie (like me), you might not know about LSI and the VSM. The cool thing is that these are methods that work really well in the laboratory, but have scaling problems so are not found much in large-scale systems.
Google, we know, uses Page Rank to rank pages based (partially) on the "authority" of the page. It's not clear whether Teoma uses this or not (it is patented). LSI is also patented (by Bell/Lucent), but VSM is not.
For both Google and Teoma, they seem to use hybrid approaches:
- Word occurrence, with weighting (weight of a term in a document; weight of a term in a collection). This is fundamental to all search engines (it's part of what distinguishes an information retrieval system from a database).
- Statistical relations among words and documents (e.g., VSM and LSI techniques -- there are many variations). These look at either a term by document matrix (where each cell is a term count), or term by term matrices (where each cell a measure of the terms' pairwise relatedness).
- Clustering, to eliminate duplicates and identify groupings (Teoma seems to do this; Google does this in their directory. This is NorthernLight's claim to fame, and is patented)
- Authority ranking (it's not clear whether Teoma does what Google does, but this is probably a part of the mix)
Each search engine has its own recipe for how these and other factors are combined. If only they would share (and stop getting software patents)!
...Greg
I got all excited and went to test it out. ... google gave me much more relevant pages every time.
That might be because (according to the article) the new functionality will only be "available beginning at 5 p.m. PST Monday"
I'm not too certain about the timezones (particularly with daylight savings thrown into the mix; and no, I can't be bothered to look up a worldclock right now), but I think PST time right now is something like 2 a.m.
So we still have a goodly while to go before we can really see what this search engine is capable of.
Not that I think this thing can actually beat Google, but at least wait with judging until you've seen the new and improved version of the engine, not what they have now...