Sean Carlos wrote that Teoma.com is now back in action. Teoma was acquired by Ask Jeeves back in 2001 and ultimately became the search technology behind Ask’s search results. Teoma was founded by Professor Apostolos Gerasoulis from Rutgers and Professor Tao Yang from UCSB helped with the technology, known as Subject-Specific Popularity. Ask.com renamed Subject-Specific Popularity to ExpertRank later on.

Eventually, Teoma went away but sometime last month, Teoma returned. Sean Carlos asked IAC, the parent company of Ask.com and Teoma, why the return and they told him they wanted to give searchers an alternative to Ask.com by giving them a “simple interface for everyday keyword web search.” IAC told Sean:

As we announced in November, we are focused on building the best service for answering questions and delivering the best results for searches posed as questions on Ask.com. We re-launched Teoma.com in mid-April to provide a simplified interface for everyday keyword web search. Teoma.com’s organic results will be similar to, but not exactly the same as, those on Ask.com, primarily for testing purposes, but also to provide a more simplified search experience.

It is true, the organic results on Teoma are similar but definitely not exactly the same as Ask.com.

Related Topics: Ask: Web Search

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz