Become.com Announces Affinity Index Ranking Algorithm
Become.com yesterday unveiled its answer to Google PageRank, Affinity Index Ranking (AIR), its patent-pending technology for ranking web pages. AIR provides highly targeted search results by understanding the context of pages on the web. Become.com is a search engine that helps people find product reviews and relevant buying information.
AIR represents a fundamentally new approach to ranking web pages that integrates advanced concepts from Applied Physics and Engineering Dynamics. AIR identifies exceptional web pages by understanding the level of interconnection between valuable sites from within specific fields of interest. AIR evaluates a web page based on what other “knowledgeable” sites in that specific field say about the page, and also evaluates the page based on what the page says about other “knowledgeable” sites in the specific field.
“AIR is the first ground-breaking advancement in search engine technology since Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) introduced PageRank(TM) in the late 1990s. The AIR algorithms are highly advanced and ideally suited to specific topical areas such as shopping research,” said Yeogirl Yun, founder, chairman and CTO at Become.com.
“By introducing AIR, Become.com will vastly improve the overall search experience,” adds Michael Yang, founder, president and CEO of Become.com. “If a consumer is searching for a ‘television,’ AIR returns information that can be used to aid the research process and help consumers educate themselves on buying a television. General search engines return irrelevant information such as various television stations.”
Unlike Become.com’s AIR, Google’s PageRank estimates the popularity of a given web page by looking only at links into the page and doing so without any understanding of context. Become.com’s AIR, on the other hand, considers a site to be valuable if 1) it receives links from valuable sites within a similar topic of interest and 2) if it provides links to other valuable sites within a similar topic of interest (while minimizing links to off-topic sites).
