Comparison Of Google to Teoma

randomErr writes "SearchEngineWatch.com was compared the good and the bad of both engine. They wrote the cool thing about Teoma is that its community-seeking behavior is both query-specific, and happens in real time. Whenever you type in a query, we're actually looking for the communities after you type the query. Teoma's approach differs from Google's, which uses a similar, but more static ranking system. It's also unlike the approach taken by Northern Light that classify web pages based on pre-defined categories."

Comments

Google Labs

[Nept]

How many people know about google labs? It's got a lot of other cool stuff like sets, voice search, and my favorite, the keyboard shortcuts :)

Google Might inlcude "community-seeking" in future

[Discoteck]

Here is a article on TechTV's site concerning Google's programming contest winner. Hey look I found the /. thread concerning the contest. I can't find the original thread, but I am sure someone out there started one.

I would imagine that if they awarded this guy $10,000 plus expenses for his trip out to visit them, that they would have serious thoughts about adding this feature to their website.

I wonder why Mr. Dan Egnor decided to release all his source code for this project under the GNU liscene when google is paying him all this money to essentially act as a consultant for them.

I wonder how long it takes for the other search engines to integrate this source code into their engines. Is this Teoma Google's closest competitor? They have the Teoma search bar and their site seems to be reasonably fast.

I certainly see no reason to switch.

Oh and by the way the Google Toolbar has been updated apparently since (6/7/02) if you haven't downloaded it since then you might want to check it out again. I think they added some new buttons.

Re:Google Might inlcude "community-seeking" in fut

[GigsVT]

I think they added some new buttons.

OOOO, shiny.

Seriously though, Opera integrates search bar functionality right in the browser, and if you want to try a different search engine with the same query, just pull down the menu and pick another. Google is the default though.

Re:Google rules because...

[echucker]

Also, finding Googlisms are fun. That is trying to find two words in the same search query that where the query only returns one result.

Swing and a miss. The term you're looking for is googlewhack. "oligotrophic" and "festering" is a good example, for one.

Teoma toolbar

[jesser]

Teoma now has a toolbar for IE/Win, similar to the Google Toolbar. Here is a quick comparison of the toolbars:

The Teoma toolbar is missing a lot of features that the Google toolbar has.

• Teoma's toolbar does not have a "Search Site" button.
  
• Google adds "Google Search" to Internet Explorer's context menu for selected text. Teoma does not. (This feature is built into Mozilla, by the way.)
  
• Shift+Enter doesn't open the search results in a new window like it does in the Google Toolbar.
  
• Alt+Enter doesn't go straight to the first hit like it does in the Google Toolbar (I'm Feeling Lucky).
  
• Alt+D (focus address bar) and Alt+G (focus Google toolbar) do not work while the Teoma toolbar has focus. Furthermore, CLICKING on the Google toolbar does not work when the Teoma toolbar has focus.

It does, however, have Alt+S to focus the search field in the toolbar (Google uses Alt+G). This is good because the first thing you're going to do after focusing the search field is type a search phrase using the keyboard.

The Teoma toolbar makes it easy to add and remove toolbar buttons. I like that.

The "Email this page to a friend" feature is useless. It creates a message that advertises the Teoma search bar and almost hides the information you were trying to send. Unlike the "Send Page" feature in IE and Mozilla, Teoma only sends a link to the page (like IE's and Mozilla's "Send Link"), but it doesn't tell you this.

Problems with BOTH toolbars:

• Neither Google nor Teoma makes their toolbar Search button search for selected text. (Same with the search buttons built into IE and Mozilla.) You can drag the selection into the search textbox, but that's awkward.
  
• Clicking search brings you to a page with a search box but does not focus the search box for you. In contrast, the front page for each search engine focuses the search box automatically, saving you a mouse click.
  
• Pasted Japanese text comes out as a bunch of question marks, and clicking search actually searches for question marks (%3f).
  
• The only version available is for Internet Explorer for Windows.

YOU are the product not the technology !

[sh0rtie]

i went there and i wanted to see their privacy policy before i used the engine, but i had to actually use their search engine before able to see a link, this was after the site had tried to place 2 cookies on my system,
one from teoma and one from a 1x1 gif webbug from askcm.com, after performing a search the webbug transmitted what i had searched for and a GUID to the askcm.com address as well in the form of a hash.
nearly every way of tracking your behaviour has been implemented on their site.

Of course it does finaly provide (after using) it mentions they will take if they can personally identifying info and they share it with 3rd partys (with permission) (yeah right like yahoo/hotmail did)

On using Internet Explorers "privacy report" feature (which uses the webstandards w3c p3p privacy method) it came up as not supporting that either

pretty un-professional if i cant view a privacy policy before using their service, isnt that what its for ?

not that google is any different of course as it too doesnt support the w3c privacy standard and tries to set a cookie, but it doesnt use webbugs to thirdparty sites and set 2 cookies so i guess thats an improvement.

Looking at the toolbar they offer i have to agree to the the same terms as their website!, which seems strange as they expect me to install software without a explanation of what its gonna do to my system (spyware anyone ?).

Teoma (ask) is yet another classic venture of YOU are the product not the search engine so selling you to the highest bidder takes more importance than the technology ever will.