Consider the logic of this investment: people get sick regardless of what the economy’s doing, and one of Kosmix’s top sites is RightHealth.  Moreover, a company statement makes known that RightHealth is “the sixth most visited health site on Hitwise and receives over 3.9 million unique visitors a month according to Quantcast.”

Another Kosmix property, RightAutos, might not be so recession-proof – people could visit more mechanics than dealerships if money is tight, making new-car advertisements less profitable.  Still, RightAutos offers news and videos (as opposed to straight-up buyers’ information), so it’s not a bad bet, either.

DAG Ventures, Accel, and Lightspeed are the groups that placed the $10 million wager, by the way.  Accel and Lightspeed have contributed to Kosmix in the past, while DAG is new to the club.

Meanwhile, on that whole will-the-economy-crash front, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports, “Morgan Stanley has issued a full recession alert . . .”  Eep.

Truveo’s proficiency in video search has led to other partnerships with companies like Kewego and Kosmix, with the CBS Radio deal representing the latest pairing this year.

“With video becoming such an important part of the Web experience, more and more sites are looking to become video enabled,” Truveo CEO and AOL Video senior VP Tim Tuttle said in a statement.

The deal represents an efficient way for CBS Radio to quickly complement its websites with additional rich media content. Truveo’s effective video search relevancy has been well-documented, which leaves the task of making it work best with CBS Radio to the web developers who will integrate it.

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Queries for medical conditions will drive available video results to the right side of the RightHealth page. Behind the scenes, developers used Truveo’s APIs to connect to video search results.”

“Kosmix took the APIs and developer tools one step further. Kosmix users simply see the results while the search process is hidden from them,” Truveo co-founder and CEO Tim Tuttle said in a statement.

We’ve liked Truveo ever since it emerged in 2005. It has evolved into a search product that can stand toe to toe with Google and other search companies.

Hitwise analyst LeeAnn Prescott cited Case’s recent turn at the podium at the just-concluded D Conference. The high-profile talk has been matched by sky-high traffic to Revolution Health.

“Revolution Health is setting out to be far more than just a health information source on the web, but it is already succeeding on that front,” Prescott wrote. “For the week ending May 26, 2007, Revolution Health was ranked #11 in the Health & Medical – Information category, and traffic increased by 113% since the week ending April 28, 2007, when it was ranked #23.”

A lot of traffic to health sites comes from search engines; Revolution Health saw 49 percent of its traffic for the week ending May 26 arrive that way. Google unsurprisingly sent the site 65 percent of search engine traffic.

Prescott was surprised to see Ask ticking along behind Google, with 16 percent of sent traffic to Revolution Health. Another 15 percent came from Yahoo Search, leaving 4 percent to come from sites like MSN/Live Search and other engines.

As to the merits of Revolution Health, a query for ‘heel pain’ told us plenty. Two of the top three results were for products from the Revolution Health Store, which partners with Drugstore.com. The fourth and fifth results appeared to be responses to a quiz on heel pain, without references to the original source questions.

Below the Revolution Health results, the site displayed additional results from Kosmix, a health site we have profiled previously. Those answers were more informative, and in the case of one answer from the American Podiatric Medical Association, much more authoritative.

As for the geotargeting in the ubiquitous Google ads alongside the Revolution Health results, it needs some work. Our search brought out one ad for a specialist in Cincinnati. A 90-minute drive to the Queen City on a bad heel is not something your humble WebProNews writers want to try.

We aren’t sold on Revolution Health yet. Anyone trying them out also should give Kosmix or Healthline a test as well, to get a broad picture of the information available for a given query. Naturally one’s doctor should be part of any attempts to diagnose a medical issue.

Autobytel’s current site is nice, but it’s not terribly special.  It, Edmunds, Kelley Blue Book, and any number of other sites tend to blend together in terms of usefulness, even if their designs set them apart.  MyRide.com should (if it lives up to a recent press release) showcase some true advances.

The site will offer “numerous search-based content features such as community-based blogs, road crash test reports, green car profiles, future car snapshots, and user car summaries in a set of smart, relevant and intuitive results,” Autobytel said.  And in an email to WebProNews, a Kosmix spokesperson also mentioned sections for service and repair, parts and accessories, and racing and performance – on top of all the standard stuff.

Moreover, MyRide.com has been labeled “the world’s first fully-integrated automotive vertical search experience.”  The site will “leverage Kosmix’s sophisticated web categorization technology,” and the result, dubbed Automotive SmartSearch, “aggregates automotive content from across the Internet and integrates it with comprehensive content relevant to consumers’ needs.”

Can MyRide.com live up to expectations and stand out from the crowd of other automotive sites?  I don’t know.  But so long as MyRide.com doesn’t drain cars of 50 horsepower or cause “the left rear wheel and brake drum assembly to separate from the vehicle,” it’ll easily avoid being the worst thing in the auto industry.  Look for MyRide.com to launch next month.

The tale of Dr. Todd Mitchell and his search for an antidote for six people who had ingested death cap mushrooms led him to Google Scholar. He spent several hours searching until finding the result his patients needed: milk thistle.

Five of the six patients survived thanks to the treatment, but the sixth died after the toxins in her liver spread to her kidneys. The survivors all faced the prospect of emergency liver transplants or dying until Mitchell found the cure.

Had he been aware of other search engines like Kosmix, that search would have taken far less time. I heard from Kosmix today, after their staff had seen my earlier story.

They invited me to visit the site, and search for death cap mushroom under the Health tab. The top result led to a Topic Page for death cap mushrooms, and located there under Drugs was a listing for silibinin, derived from milk thistle, which Mitchell was able to obtain for his patients.

Total time to find this on Kosmix: roughly five seconds.

I decided to try the same query on Healthline to see if that health-focused vertical search would deliver a similar result for death cap mushroom. Its top result was a doctor-reviewed article from the Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine about milk thistle; the link pointed directly to the death cap mushroom section of the two-page article.

Healthline did not provided an immediate reference to silibinin as Kosmix did, so Mitchell would have had to do a little more digging to find that. It probably would not have taken a knowledgeable physician like him very long to make that connection.

Vertical search has been growing in importance, but it hasn’t broken through to the mainstream like Google has. Hopefully more medical professionals will learn of and utilize options like Kosmix and Healthline to help round out the information they possess when faced with a difficult diagnosis.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

The site has a clever premise, and whoever wrote the “About Us” section admits that they’re “in the early stages of Kosmix.” Also, the word “beta” is clearly visible above the Kosmix logo on the home page. Even allowing for these circumstances, though, some of the search results were not entirely useful.

When searching for the University of Kentucky, I was offered results in the categories of “Causes,” “Symptoms,” “Treatments,” and “Preventions,” among other, more reasonable, selections. Still, the last time I checked, UK defined itself as an institute of higher education, not a disease.

Kosmix presented information in “Fitness” and “Written for Doctors – Expert Information” after I inquired about yellow scarves. Unless this form of neckwear has become a hot item at the gym, and then somehow led to injuries, I can’t see how these results are entirely relevant.

At issue is what appears to be search engine’s goal, as told to Micah Ailetcher by product manager Mark Johnson: “to categorize the entire Internet.” Unfortunately, they don’t have enough categories just now to make their search results look even remotely sane. Don’t give up, though-the site reports its “list is growing fast.” And in the meantime, at the bottom of every search page, you can report if you were “satisfied with these results” and offer feedback.

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Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.

I’ve found two:

Quintura. Has a cool new UI. Here’s a demo. (You can try it out, but it requires a download and install of a client application). I find that this is a bit frustrating to use. I like iterating through many searches that are subsets of the first search and getting back to try a new search isn’t very intuitive. But, once you get used to it this is a really cool way to search cause it shows you the other possible choices.

Kosmix. This afternoon I talked with their executive team after getting out of the Entrepreneur event. I asked them what Google does better. Most things it turns out. But they found a really important place where they are dramatically better than Google. Where? Whenever you have an open-ended search that has no “right” answers. For instance, search Google for “Diabetes” and you’ll get 10 answers alright, but they are rarely useful results. Kosmix gives a lot better grouping of answers. Update: Kosmix’ Kevin Ota tells me they’ll turn on their engine with a better UI on February 7 (and a bunch of new features when they ship it officially at the Demo conference).

Is search done? Not according to these two companies.

Or, ask Gary Price of Search Engine Watch. He just linked to TVEyes that does a new keyword search of TV News Content and other video stuff.

Are you seeing other companies do cool things in the search world?

Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

Go to Scobleizer …