Google buys Orion algorithm :(
 

http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking/...521239582.html

"Google is understood to have snapped up the rights to an advanced text search algorithm invented by a University of NSW student.

The algorithm, or search engine tool, is called Orion and was developed by UNSW PhD student Ori Allon at the university's School of Computer Science.

Orion works as an add-on to existing search engines to improve the relevance of search and won praise from Microsoft founder Bill Gates last year."

So far, so good. But here's the bad bit:

"The results to the query are displayed immediately in the form of expanded text extracts, giving the searcher the relevant information without having to go to the website - although there is still that option."

Copyright breach, anyone? |angry|

You seriously don't think google will worry about copyright breach, do you? Think about google/yahoo images/videos. What's text next to the vids and pics?

That's not part of Orion's algorithm; it has to do with how results are displayed. I doubt Google is interested at all in that part of Orion's work. Even if they planned to change the way results are displayed, I don't see the point in worrying about it. It's relatively minor compared to the mess they made with their index in the last few months.

Yeah Halfdeck.. That I whole heartedly agree with. A lot of my high content pages (i.e. text and articles) that used to rank way up are no longer to be found. On the other hand my doorway pages are working even better! Except, as a surfer I don't really want to land on a doorway page designed to keep SE happy!

Is that the same method used to display the "binocular" views of websites on Ask.com now?

If you haven't seen the Ask.com search results in awhile, check out the ones with a little graphic of a pair of binoculars. Mouseover the graphic and an image of the website appears in a little display.

Here's their faq page about binoculars...
http://sp.ask.com/en/docs/about/binoculars.shtml

I can think of some interesting uses for that effect.


Simon

I like that idea, going to try some searches there, when i amhunting for new sponsors etc for a niche and use the se's to see what is out there, i hate being sent to a spyware/virus site or popup hell, would be nice to see the binocular view before hand.

Yeah, I saw that too. Thought "well that's cool", ASK is running prime time tv commercials where I am. That's how I saw it. Can't wait for someone to come out with a script that let's me do the same thing with my internal site.