Categorizing the Web

The general purpose Web search engine (Yahoo, Google and others) does not serve people needing specialized, industry-specific information well. This article mentions two companies that use categories to tailor the collection of information and display of results to particular business needs.

Web Search Gets Down to Business, by Cathleen Moore, Infoworld (Oct 31, 2005)

Convera's private label search engine, Excalibur, seems especially advanced with capability to do "deep web" indexing employing millions of topical categories and displaying results as "facets". Convera is targeting Excalibur to "vertical industries such as media, financial services, research, and legal".

The Excalibur web page states that "Convera has assembled a vast storehouse of commercially recognized taxonomies, plus privately compiled classification systems and other knowledge sources, to give Excalibur one of the largest and most detailed Web indexes on the planet. This Excalibur "intelligence index" links users to topical, targeted Web results in real time for a complete and comprehensive perspective."

Exalead, from France, also uses categorization to help searchers see how "provide an integrated search experience that serves up results from multiple sources in a single view".