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Vivisimo Taps Remix Clustering For Search

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:58:35 +0000

A new patent pending technology for the firm behind Clusty.com introduces what they are calling “Clustering 2.0″ to search results.

There’s an old accounting joke where an executive asks “What’s 2+2?” and the accountant answers with “What would you like it to be?”

Vivisimo announced a technology that may give people the answers they want, if the first search doesn’t present them on an obscure topic. Through their remix clustering, company CEO Raul Valdes-Perez said it works to show people more topics without overloading them with a lengthy list:

With a single click, remix clustering answers the question: What other, subtler topics are there? It works by clustering again the same search results, but with an added input: ignore the topics that the user just saw. Typically, the user will then see new major topics that didn

Clusty Remixes Search

Janet Meiners — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:57:07 +0000

Search engine Clutsy has a new clustering technology to help you find more information related to your search.

They already have a folder of subtopics relating to your search topics. Now there is a small link near the folders with related topics that says, “remix.” Click it and you’ll see more related searches or clusters.

It’s like the shuffle feature on your CDs. The patent-pending “remix clustering” works dynamically to exclude search results you’ve already seen. In other words, it shows you new clusters.

The company Vivisimo recently won InfoWorld’s Technology of the Year award for the best Enterprise Search solution with their Velocity 6.0 search product. This is their third year winning the award.

Remix clustering functionality is built into Velocity 6.0.

On a side note, I like Clutsy’s job search that’s built right into their search engine. Type in your city and click the jobs tab and you’ll see jobs located there – it’s powered by Indeed. That means it aggregates many different job sites. You can do the same with images, blog posts, and other kinds of searches without having to retype your query.

Comments

Clusty Mobile Is Made Available

Doug Caverly — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:18:09 +0000

I’m always suspicious when a company claims to have made its product or service available for mobiles. Is the new version different than the regular offering? And is it something I’d even want to access from my cell phone? In regards to Clusty Mobile, a search site, the answer to that first question is “yes.”

The answer to the second question is “no,” but that could just be me – as I’ve said before, I tend to use my cell phone as a paperweight instead of a communication device, and I almost never explore anything other than those two options. That’s not Clusty Mobile’s fault.

Clusty Mobile is a moderately thorough reworking of Clusty.com. “Nobody wants to wade through thousands of links to access Web information via their mobile devices,” admits Raul Valdes-Perez, the CEO of Vivisimo (which runs Clusty), in a statement. “We’ve combined the reliability of Clusty’s search capabilities with navigation appropriate for mobile users and given them the ability to find exactly what they’re looking for right at their fingertips.”

Judge for yourself. Clusty.com search results for the term “dog” begin with a stock quote, then move on to Wikipedia, the Dog Breed Information Center, and the Association of Pet Dog Trainers. Clusty Mobile turns up the same stock quote, and then gives a one-sentence review of the movie “Firehouse Dog,” which is apparently “ruined with endless fart and poop jokes, and an overlong run time.”

To be fair, however, “dog” might not be a common search term for mobile users. And Clusty Mobile offers up alternative phrases that Clusty.com does not (“dog breeds,” “dog show,” etc.) in an effort save users from those annoying small keypads.

Clusty Mobile doesn’t make me want to yank out my phone and start searching away, but for those of you who already do this sort of thing, it may be worth a look.

Big Brands Clueless On Site Search

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 01 May 2007 18:00:37 +0000

Visiting the website for a major consumer brand should lead people to a useful, easily found site search if desired. Vivisimo’s VP of Marketing, Rebecca Thompson, gleefully mocked several big name brands for their unimpressive site search efforts.

Big Brands Clueless On Site Search

When you see something with “Seven Deadly Sins” in the title hit the inbox, and the old Bayesian filter doesn’t toss it out with extreme prejudice, it could be an entertaining read. That seems to be the vibe Vivisimo wanted to generate with its look at The Seven Deadly Sins of Site Search.

Our phone chat with Rebecca touched on how major brand name companies in the Fortune 500, presumably with the resources to do site search properly, have made a pig’s breakfast of it instead. “Site visitors have a search expectation when they reach a site,” she said.

What they are getting can vary well away from the expectations they have based on their experience with general search engines. Without search, a site like the one for Yum! Brands loses the opportunity for a conversion activity, Rebecca said.

Sites that don’t do e-commerce have been poor site search performers. Whether it’s the apathy of a ConocoPhillips, America’s number two oil refinery, delivering woeful search results, or the complexity of too many search options (hi Archer Daniels Midland), regular followers of the search industry would be aghast at what passes for search technology.

Imagine what the typical Internet user thinks when faced with Bank of America’s search, which requires the person to know exactly what question they want to ask. No simple keyword searching at BoA. The answer that comes back may be accurate, as in a response to ‘accounts for minors’, but not very useful if the answer concerns custodial accounts rather than a basic savings account.

Cadillac’s site search is a lesson in egoism, Rebecca noted, with a lengthy set of instructions about Boolean operators displayed. The visitor only gets to see that if he or she stumbles upon the search link on Cadillac.com (it’s on the bottom left of the page.)

The potential for brand confusion exists if a company, in this case United Technologies Corporation, uses a vendor to provide search results. At UTC, queries redirect to utc.mondosearch.com, a URL that doesn’t reflect the company’s true identity.

Some of these search no-nos could be the result of a controlling corporate mindset. A company may be too wedded to its idea of how people should navigate their sites without considering how those same people actually want to do so.

Rebecca said these companies have ten seconds to engage the visitor before they back out and hit a Google or a Yahoo to search for what they want to find. Schering-Plough’s Claritin displays all kinds of nice visual elements on its microsite. Those same elements vanish when one performs a search.

Fortune 500 companies shouldn’t let their visitors disappear like Claritin’s elements do. They can afford to enable enterprise search for their web presence, and ought to do so at the most optimal level they can build or license for it.

Vivisimo, Gigablast Snare FirstGov Contracts

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 21:45:30 +0000

Vivisimo’s partnership with MSN has led to it receiving one of three Blanket Purchase Agreements from the GSA.

FirstGov.gov, a web site focused on delivering government information to the public, has a new top-three list of Internet search engines eligible to compete for federal task orders through September of 2010. Gigablast, Vivisimo, and Norwegian-based FAST Search and Transfer received the news from the General Services Administration.

Gigablast congratulated Vivisimo, a longtime Gigablast client, in a statement today. Vivisimo, working with MSN Search, won the first task order awarded. That task order will see Vivisimo and MSN provide enhanced search results for the FirstGov web portal.

In the new arrangement, Vivisimo will use MSN Search Web Service to pull results from government documents in its index. Further, filtering operators supported by MSN Search will help users better query for documents. Vivisimo will use its Velocity software and Clusty search service to cluster MSN and Vivisimo government search results.

“Together with Microsoft, we will build the finest government search portal the world has seen, helping citizens learn and profit from the rich information offered across thousands of government Web sites,” said Raul Valdes-Perez, CEO and co-founder of Vivsimo, in a statement today.

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

Add Vivisimos Clustering Technology To Your Site

Chris Richardson — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 20:55:43 +0000

If you run a site that features a great deal of content, having an effective site search function can be a deal breaker for visitors and for potential customers.

It’s this knowledge that seemingly inspired Vivisimo, developer of the Clusty.com clustering search engine, to introduce an affiliate program where potential clients would be able to integrate aspects of Vivisimo’s technology onto their site, while also participating in a revenue sharing program where clients can potentially get a percentage of money made from sponsored link clicks (provided by Looksmart and Ask Jeeves). The ability to share ad revenue from PPC clicks is one of the main differences between Vivisimo’s affiliate program and installing a free site search from Google or Yahoo.

After completing the approval process, clients will then receive the Vivisimo software, developed in XML, which is then integrated onto their site. Once this is complete, visitors to the Clusty-equipped site we be able to perform a number of tasks like site search and web search. When results are returned to these queries, they are accompanied with clusters that can help further refine a user’s search by giving them result “suggestions” they may not have thought of.

For those who may not know, Vivisimo’s clustering technology provides users with a list of like items (a cluster), which is derived by grouping documents (from related keyword searches) based on their textual similarities and another, more human-based method that outlines what users want to see when examining cluster results. This technology is used by AOL Search, among others.

For further descriptions, take a look at Vivisimo’s clustering technology white paper (pdf).

By joining Vivisimo’s affiliate program, clients will be able to feature this technology on their site; a proposition that Senior Director Ed Brunins feels increases the monetization of a site by a noticeable margin. Brunins goes on to say, “Vivisimo’s Affiliate Solutions are designed for small to medium-sized Web sites to optimize their existing web traffic. The turnkey solution provides a way for partners to monetize on the strength of their traffic and business plan.”

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

Vivisimo and LookSmart Partner For Clustering Search Feed

Jeremy Muncy — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 16:19:15 +0000

Vivisimo, provider of clustering and meta-search software, and LookSmart, a leader in search, announced in the industry’s first clustering search feed, which will dramatically improve click-through rates and increase revenue generation capabilities for Web sites.

“The Vivisimo and LookSmart partnership will increase revenue for Web site managers while simultaneously providing a next-generation interface that improves the user experience,” said Raul Valdes-Perez, President of Vivisimo. “This offering is a win-win for both site visitors and site owners.”

Boris Shimanovsky, Vice President of Partner Development for LookSmart said, “This relationship offers another way for our advertisers to gain access to high quality traffic.”

“This partnership combines two award-winning offerings into a powerful revenue-generating, experience enhancing tool for Web sites,” said Philipp. “We look forward to the opportunity to help Web site managers maximize their site’s potential with this winning formula.”

Jeremy Muncy is a staff writer for WebProNews.com

Vivisimo Ranked Second Most Popular Search Engine

WebProNews — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 20:10:34 +0000

In a study done by About.com, who polled a focus group of 181 men and women between the ages of 20 and 64, found that metasearch engine Vivisimo tied with Yahoo for the second place in popularity with a score of 4.6 out of 5.

Vivisimo employees a clustered approach to its search results. Clustering organizes the results into meaningful groups providing users a quick overview of the main ideas buried in the results. For example, with Clustering, if you search for the keywords “German shepherds”, Vivisimo will also offer you results organized by “breeds”, “training”, “breeders”, “rescue”, and “clubs”.

“Vivisimo is an excellent alternative to Google. It is fast, clean, and relevant, and it offers guiding search suggestions in the form of ‘Clustered Results’,” said Paul Gil, About.com Guide and long time Internet veteran. “It offers all the functionality and speed of Google, with ‘Clustering’ added. Once the users discovered Vivisimo, it quickly became a favorite.”

Not only has Vivisimo gained the second position in About’s poll, Vivisimo has also been selected twice as the “Best MetaSearch Engine” by Search Engine Watch.

Saman Haqqi, Director of Marketing at Vivisimo stated, “We are pleased with the growing recognition for Vivisimo’s Clustering. As the size of the Web indices continues to grow, Web searchers need to have this huge amount of data organized meaningfully. At Vivisimo, it is our mission to help people handle large amounts of data by presenting them with organized information.”

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Website Submission: Just the Facts

Aaron Wall — Tue, 11 May 2004 18:45:36 +0000

Search Engine Traffic Breakdown

Over 90% of US search engine traffic is driven by Yahoo! or Google owned search technology – source: Search Engine Watch. Additionally Ask Jeeves owns around 5% of the traffic. You may hear the names of many other search engines, but most of them are powered by the above search engines in one way or another. For example, Yahoo! owns Inktomi, AltaVista, and AllTheWeb. All three of those search engines are powered from the same database as Yahoo! Search. A few meta search engines also drive a decent amount of traffic.

What are Meta Search Engines?

Meta search engines do not crawl the web, but combine the results of other search engines. If you are listed in the top few engines then you will also appear in meta search results. Vivisimo is an example of a meta search engine.

Search Engine Submission Software

There is no reason to purchase search engine submission software. Any search engine worth being listed in will usually list your site if you get just a few incoming links. Also people who claim to resubmit your site monthly are trying to take advantage of you. Search engines will keep your site in their index if you have a few decent inbound links.

I do not even submit sites to search engines anymore, but here are links to the only five search engine submission pages I would potentially use.

Free Search Engine Submission

I rarely submit pages to search engines since I know they will follow links and index the pages (that is what search engines do). If you want to submit your site (please note submission does not guarantee inclusion) then these are the locations where you can.

Submit to Google (free) – powers around half of US based web search.

Submit to Yahoo! (free) – powers over 40% of US based web search. Requires a free Yahoo! id. Yahoo! also has a paid inclusion program by the name of Overture Site Match.

Submit to Ask Jeeves / Teoma ($30) – powers around 5% of web search. Ask Jeeves / Teoma is the only major search engine which does not have a free site submit option. Eventually they will list your site in their search results if you have a few inbound links.

Submit to Gigablast (free) – powers a much small percentage of search than the other engines, but it is quick to index pages when the site submit is working.

Directory Submission

Directories are human compiled search engines. They generally each have their own specific focus and taxonomy. By listing your site in a few directories you can ensure that search engines will eventually pick up your pages.

Since directories are compiled by humans they take an extremely large amount of time to maintain. Directories do not aim to list all websites, but only the best. Most websites will not fit the criteria to list in the best directories.

Major Directories

There are two directories which are generally stand above all others in distribution and importance.

Open Directory Project - 100% free directory of websites created by volunteer editors. The Open Directory Project is the largest directory on the web, and many other sites mirror portions of the data on their sites. Open Directory Project submission guidelines

Yahoo! Directory – large directory owned by Yahoo!. Commercial listings are $299 / yr (via Yahoo! Express), whereas noncommercial sites can be submitted free. Yahoo! Directory submission guidelines. You do not need to list in the Yahoo! Directory to list in Yahoo! Search search results. The $299 fee is not worth it for most websites. For $299 you can list your site in many second tier directories.

Second Tier Directories

There are a ton of smaller directories on the web. Many of them require a reciprocal link to be included. If a directory requires a reciprocal link to be listed in then it is usually not worth listing in.

The cost for submission into most second tier directories is usually less than $50. In addition it is easy to become an editor for many of these second tier directories. Some of the more popular second tier directories are:

JoeAnt

Zeal / LookSmart

GoGuides

Skaffe

Web Beacon

BlueFind

Wow Directory

Gimpsy

Reviewed Web Guides

Some sites have a directory type structure but are focused more on article based and have individual editors which frequently write articles covering their topics.

Web Guides are generally extremely selective in what sites they will list.

About

BBC Web Guide

Virtual Library – somewhat of a cross between a web guide and a directory. The Virtual Library was the original web directory.

Topic Specific Directories

Many directory are built to cover niche topics. Sometimes these links are more valuable than links deep within general directories since your specific category may be only one or two links away from the home page.

Business.com is a business directory, and there are literally thousands and thousands of other topical directories. I think one time I even found a nail care directory. You can search for directories specific to your site by searching some of the top search engines for various descriptive keywords in your topic (for me some examples might be seo, marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization…) and adding phrases to them such as add url, submit site, resources, websites. More tips on how to find web directories.

Other Directory Resources

You can find tons of other directories looking through the following resources.

ISEDB: Web Directories

Directory Archives

Yahoo! Directory: Search Engines & Directories

Google Directory: Directories

Other Link Ideas

There are tons of free links here and there on the web. Some good examples would be:

Leaving testimonials for people (sometimes they will link to your site).

Providing donations to help out other websites or organizations.

Putting your website in your signature in SEO discussion forums (or any other type of forum).

Leaving comments on blogs (Journals such as Fast Company, Inc., or any of the other thousands or millions of blogs on the web). Some of them go through redirects, but some do not. I have had a decent number of customers contact me based on comments I have left in blogs.

Writing articles that you submit to sites like Buzzle or sites related to your topic.

Aaron Wall is the author of SEO Book, an ebook offering the latest
search engine optimization tips and strategies. From SEOBook.com Aaron
gives away free advice and search engine optimization tools. He is a
regular conference speaker, partner in Clientside SEM, and runs the
Threadwatch community.

Vivisimo Grabs the eBay Mop and Bucket

WebProNews — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 17:05:30 +0000

Vivisimo is boldly going where no leader in clustering and meta-search software has gone before.

The well-known provider of document clustering has taken on the challenge of cleaning up eBay’s product listings.

In hopes of bringing a more satisfactory experience to online shoppers, Vivisimo’s newly launched eBay Search Tool allows users to quickly and easily search the eBay marketplace in what Vivisimo describes as “a highly personalized manner.”

While this new method is far from being perfect, it does have its perks. The search engine is capable of sorting results into more advanced groups such as auction title and description, price, number of bids, and time remaining on the auction.

There have been no reports indicating whether Pittsburgh-based Vivisimo is making profits off this new search tool, although some experts believe this is highly likely.

Founded in 1995, eBay, an online auction site with millions of members worldwide, plans to add integration capabilities for Java and SOAP this spring to encourage more outsiders to connect to its platform through their own creations.

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