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

Here's my evaluation

[Anonymous Coward]

Google rules. Teoma sucks.

But, seriously, Google has all sorts of features (cache, newsgroups, api, etc, etc) that Teoma doesn't. It's not just the size of your index, it's how you let people use it. There's a reason Google is my (and many other people's) start page.

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

[crazney]

google has two great things:

a) pigeon rank
b) linux

Teoma has:

a) no animal employement
b) windows.

Teoma's innovations won't benefit most

[Sheetrock]

But as the article says, Teoma will probably never replace Google.

In some ways, Teoma is more innovative. It's using an extension of an algorithm designed a few years ago by researchers, HITS, that actually goes beyond just searching an index based on a keyword into utilizing the idea of social networks to try to get you closer to what you want. However, this probably impacts search speeds, which I'm guessing is a lot of the reason why their searchspace is so much smaller than the ones used by more contemporary search engines like Yahoo! or Google.

People don't really dig that far with search engines, and I think Teoma's features will be wasted because of this -- most people are just using it to look up the domain for an organization rather than exhaustively researching every page they can get their hands on.

scribled not writes

[WillSeattle]

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

In clear English, that would be:

writes "SearchEngineWatch.com has compared good and bad aspects of multiple search engines. They wrote that 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 actually look for the communities after you type the query in. Teoma's approach differs from Google's, which uses a similar, but more static ranking system. It's also different from the approach taken by Northern Light that classify web pages based on pre-defined categories."

Sigh. Sure hope you're not writing any Open Source documentation ...

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Edit! Dear God!

[Wrexen]

SearchEngineWatch.com was compared the good and the bad of both engine.
And so it begins

They wrote the cool thing about Teoma is that its community-seeking behavior is both query-specific, and happens in real time.
Quotes here anyone? Is this a quote? Are they summarizing? We'll never know

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.
Google's approach or Teoma's approach??

It's also unlike the approach taken by Northern Light that classify web pages based on pre-defined categories.
Last time I checked, "the approach" was singular

I'm not trying to be a troll or a grammar_nazi here, but is just a little proofreading too much to ask for? This write-up is nearing the 1.0 sentence-to-error ratio

Submission

[fuerstma]

Google - easy to submit to.
Temoa - PITA to submit to.

Google wins.

(not to mention the other goodies, such as Google owning Deja. All of a sudden I'm pitchin a tent in my roos)

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.

No, it's working fine

[GuyMannDude]

I typed in a computer query and 5th on the result list was someone from Entertainment Tonight.

You too? I thought it was just me:

query: whois failure
result: John Tesh

GMD

Self-serving results

[rjamestaylor]

Teoma's results for "Google sucks" and "Teoma Sucks"

• "Teoma Sucks" returns "We found no matches for your search "teoma sucks""

  "Google sucks" returns 15 matches.

Google's results:

• "Google Sucks" on Google returns a boat-load.

  "Teoma Sucks" A few results--obviously, not a popular topic

  Teoma Sucks on Google returns a lot, too.

Notice, too, that Teoma is an ASP=based system. *PeeYew!*

Relevance of results to search

[Dr_LHA]

Type "Slashdot" Into Teoma, here's what I got:

1. Article about Andover IPO
2. Slashdot.net domain placeholder/squatter
3. USGS article detailing the Slashdot effect on it's web site.

...and so on. Slashdot itself isn't even in the top 10. Unscientific I know - but the reason I use Google is that the most relevant like is almost always the top one (and certainly in the top 10).

Teoma misses the obvious stuff...

[EchoMirage]

Teoma misses the obvious stuff. Like "Slashdot," which does not bring one to slashdot.org within the first ten hits.

Teoma's technology is cool, and I'm glad to see Google getting challenged - I think it will make Google a stronger search engine.

its more of a CITH submission method

[sh0rtie]

Teuma is not so much PITA (pain in the ass) to submit to
but more of a CITH (cash in the hand) method of inclusion, meaning no cash = no listing

basically charging people to fill Teuma's database for them,
not a lot of difference from those awful search sites you find , you know ,when you happen to mispell a well known url and find yourself at a domain squatters site with popups and a search engine with "finance" and "loans" the most prominent links (as they are the most desperate they tend to pay the most) and when looking at the submission process it directs you offsite to a paypal https:// payment method paying some holdings company $29.99 in Guyana

Teuma is doomed for failure as soon as the cash runs out, and seeing that its a joint venture of ask.com (who no-one uses willingly) and themselves , it just seems a re-branding exercise for ask.com and a chance to promote their lame marketing tactics

Self-reference?

[Quixote]

Search for the term "search engine" on Google, and Google is ranked first.
Search for the term "search engine" on Teoma, and Teoma is ranked nowhere in the results! (On the first page, at least). Lycos ranks tops there.
You decide.

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.

What about Altavista?

[Daetrin]

Altavista has a very nice feature that was lacking in both google and and teoma last i checked. Altavista will search for _exactly_ what you typed in, caps, punctuation, and all.

I can not even begin to count the number of crappy links google has tried to give me because it decided that some similar word was "close enough" to what i was searching for.

That might be a useful feature for when i'm unsure of what i'm looking for, but most of the time i _know_ what i want to find, and i don't appreciate Google cluttering things up with other "likely" variants. Using the "exact phrase" in the advanced search option returns the same inexact search results.