Claria, formerly Gator and allegedly the brief focus of Microsoft interest, has announced it is working on a new search engine technology which “goes far beyond analyzing links to pages and hypertext matching, and instead evaluates how consumers actually interact with search results when they are seeking information on the Web”.
I don’t claim to really understand what they’re doing here, but the press release seems to suggest that Claria would both collect extensive user data but also offer that aggregated data to users so they can better judge search results: Claria’s press release is here:
“Even in this early stage of technology, this represents a clear ‘step function’ improvement in search methodology and relevancy,” said Jeff McFadden, president and CEO of Claria Corporation. “Over time and with more users, these types of personalization technologies will allow consumers a richer, more customized online experience. For example, a college student and a business executive who are both searching for ‘hotels in China’ would appreciate vastly different results. Ultimately, this is the power that personalization can provide – with technology automatically customizing information for the consumer.”
Could be interesting, could be creepy. Certainly personalized search is the next hilltop to scale, and this makes some sense for Claria, who need to get out of the hole they’re in.