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."

Comments

Beta indeed..

[BelDion]

It'll be a while before this Teoma thing can topple Google.

First of all, no cache. The cache in Google sort of sneaks up on you in its usefulness.. Whether it's because the website is down or because you're looking at an html version of a PDF or word document, you find that you're using the cache all the time.

More to the point though, how friggin slow is Teoma? I hope it's due to relative newness or something, because it's frightfully slow when running queries. Google flies, click search and the page comes back next to instantly (on a broadband connection anyhow), Teoma seems to be taking several seconds right now. I'd say Slashdot effect, considering where we are, but what kind of poorly designed search engine crumbles under the slashdot effect?

But will they throw crap at you?

[iturbide]

Let face it. Just how good a searchengine is technically is only part of the story. The other part is how much advertising, cookies, links to 'buy a book about whatever on amazon' and all that will they throw at you? You get the idea. This is imho what killed off altavista and loads of other search engines. If people get annoyed enough, are thrown into a portal, or just plain have to wait too long for all that crap to load, they just won't go there.

If they don't get that right, Google has little to fear.

Ten Minute Searching Score

[sam_handelman]

I have evaluated a hit as relevant if it contains information related to the question asked. General information about Greece, or about the nutrient value of artichokes (but not containing specific info as to their vitamin content), I did not count as relevant. Pretty subjective, of course.

Query (relevant hits of top 5)
Google Teoma
Religious Intolerance by the Greek Orthodox Church
5 2(1)
Nethack 3.4 Spoilers
5 0
Vitamin Content of Artichokes
4 0
Average Velocity of Asteroids
4 0
Who won the peloponnesian war?(2)
5 5
Samuel Handelman Columbia University(5)
2 0
Harry Noller University of California Santa Cruz
4 4
Edward Dratz University of Montana Bozeman
5 3
Dangers associated with mercury thermometers
2 0
Did Turing have any children?
0 0
okay
Autobiography of Alen Turing(3)
5 2
Isaac Asimov's Middle Name(4)
3 2

Anyway, my time is up. avg. 50 seconds to run and squint at each query.

Subjectively, to all of these querries, the #1 hit on google contained the answer to my question (the EXACT vitamin content of artichokes, the NAME of the side that won the war,) while Tacoma, even though the hits were relevant to the question, it was not clear if the information I sought was actually in the returned result; except for my former faculty advisor and his colleague, which Teoma found just fine.

(1) I'm counting the Scientology hit as relevant.
(2) Google corrected my spelling, which Tacoma did not. I'll accept that from a Beta.
(3) Turing didn't write one. It was a trick question. Any link to a review, specifically, of either any of three (that I found) biographies of Alan Turing I counted as a hit.
(4) I didn't get his middle name, but it turns out he wrote a story called "Middle Name" which swamped the results. Google found specific references to the story, whilest Teoma returned links to lists of Asimov's fiction, but I generously scored both as hits.
(5) when I put my name in quotes Tacoma University either a) cannot find any matches or b) doesn't understand what the quotes mean. I assume b since none of the hits it finds without quotes mention me.

Anyway, I'm satisfied in calling that statistical signifance (95% chance) that google is better.