Become.com's AIR Out-Ranks Hilltop

Mar 21, 2005 - 12:55 pm 0 by

Become.com, a relatively new player to the shopping search engine game has been getting a lot of press over the past few months. One such topic is on their vertical search technology named AIR. Today, Jason Dowdell interviewed Become's CTO Yeogirl Yum asking some targeted questions on the AIR (Affinity Index Ranking) technology. One thing that stood out in the interview was:

AIR is significantly more advanced than that hilltop algorithm. The hilltop algorithm (as described at www.cs.toronto.edu/~georgem/hilltop/) considers only links from a limited number of "expert" sources when identifying target web pages. According to the hilltop paper, "the targets are then ranked according to the number and relevance of non-affiliated experts that point to them. When such a pool of experts is not available, Hilltop provides no results. Thus, Hilltop is tuned for result accuracy and not query coverage."

AIR, on the other hand, evaluates connectivity between all pages in a given topic. Rather than focusing on "top of the hill" sites, AIR understands the overall network of sites within a topical area. Both inlinks and outlinks are evaluated to understand the level of interconnection among the sites. Advanced mathematics and concepts from Applied Physics and Engineering Dynamics are used to calculate specific scores.

Well, I am no scientist, but I do understand that it is very difficult to, in real-time, evaluate "connectivity between all pages in a given topic." Limiting it to structured data makes it easier, in addition, if we can limit it to a specific vertical, even easier.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google Ads

Google Ads Come To AI Mode & AI Overviews Desktop

May 22, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

New Google Ads Smart Bidding Exploration: Bidding Update

May 22, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Ads

Google Ads New AI Tools & Agentic Capabilities

May 22, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

New Google Docs On Using AI Generative Content & AI Search Features

May 22, 2025 - 7:21 am
Bing Search

Bing Tests Double Border Search Box

May 22, 2025 - 7:11 am
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 21, 2025

May 21, 2025 - 10:00 am
Previous Story: Cre8asite Forums's Tech Admin; Grumpus (Stock) Steps Down