search technology

Under the watchful eye of law enforcement in 40 states, Craigslist pledged Thursday to crack down on ads for prostitution on its Web sites.

As part of Craigslist's agreement with attorneys general around the country, anyone who posts an "erotic services" ad will be required to provide a working phone number and pay a fee with a valid credit card. The Web site will provide that information to law enforcement if subpoenaed.

In a move to compete against Google, search engine Ask.com on Monday launched a new version of its site. The latest iteration claims significant boosts in relevance, user interface, and speed.

Ask.com is betting on proprietary technologies like DADS, DAFS and AnswerFarm to break new ground in semantic search, Web extraction, and ranking. The company said Monday's announcement marks the first of several new search-technology innovations it will introduce in the coming months.

Microsoft said Thursday that it would set up research centers in France, Germany and Britain to improve its Internet search technology, describing the move as a vote of confidence in the European economy and in the company's ability to close the gap with Google.

Steven Ballmer, the Microsoft chief executive, said at a news conference here that the three "centers of excellence," to be based near Paris, in London and in Munich, would employ several hundred people all together.

The American Antitrust Institute said Wednesday it thinks the ad agreement between Google and Yahoo may be blocked because of antitrust issues. Norman Hawker, a senior fellow at AAI, released a white paper pointing out several anticompetitive issues with the agreement and provided suggestions.

The paper was released after AAI met with representatives from Yahoo and Google on a number of occasions, according to Hawker.

Microsoft laid out its "catch Google" strategy at the Search Engines Strategies Conference and Expo in San Jose Tuesday. Appearing as the second keynote, Satya Nadella,
senior vice president for search and advertising, vowed that additional investment and new deep-search techniques will allow the company to gain share over market behemoth Google.

Currently Microsoft gleans less than 10 percent of all Internet searches and less than five percent of Internet ad revenue from searches.

New Search Frontier

Google on Wednesday began offering an upgraded version of its Search Appliance. The hardware targets enterprises and government agencies that want a Google-like Web search for office documents.

The upgraded Google Search Appliance searches up to 10 million documents. That's the same document storage capacity as the previous version that was offered in a five-box rack. A larger, 12-box version can store, manage and search up to 30 million documents.

Searching for New Features

A new search-engine platform was unveiled Monday by some former Google engineers to compete with the leading search site. Dubbed Cuil and pronounced "cool," the new company claims to combine the largest Web index with content-based relevance, results organized by ideas, and complete user privacy. Cuil said it has indexed 120 billion Web pages, three times more than any other search engine.

In a move to build partnerships with third-party developers, Yahoo on Thursday introduced a new open Web services platform. Yahoo Search BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) gives outside developers unprecedented access to Yahoo's search technology, including the ability to re-rank and control the presentation of results.

Yahoo launched BOSS as an API in beta and said it will enable developers and companies to build world-class custom search experiences and disrupt the search industry.