Haaretz reports that Google has purchased Orion, "an advanced text search algorithm invented by Ori Alon, an Israeli student." The search forums are buzzing on this right now. Ori Alon worked on Orion while at University of New South Wales in Australia.
"For example, if you search information on the War of Independence, you'll receive a list of related words, like Etzel, Palmach, Ben-Gurion," he explained. The text will only appear on the results page if enough words relevant to the search and the link between them is reasonable. Orion also rates the texts by quality of the site in which they appear.
Search Engine Watch Forum moderator Orion (I know), posted about this technology at SEW Forums back in September 2005. The forums are now all buzzing on this news, including at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.
