4/10/2006

Google buys new search algorithm

According to Haaretz Google has just acquired a new search algorithm that has been developed by Israeli student Ori Alon. The algorithm, named Orion, seems to recognize the topic of a search query and generates a list of keywords relevant to that query. A webpage will only appear in the search results, if the page contains enough of the relevant keywords. The algorithm also considers the quality of the website for the ranking, although it is not yet clear how Orion determines quality. Alon reportedly works at Google’s offices now. I wonder if Google is actually going to implement this for their web search, or if they only acquired Orion to keep Yahoo and MSN from getting their hands onto it.