Teoma: A brief history of the Teoma search engine

Teoma is a relative newcomer to the web search market. Founded in 2000 in Piscataway, New Jersey by a team of scientists from Rutgers University, Teoma means "expert" in Gaelic.

Teoma set itself apart from the other search engines of the time through the development of technology that ranked websites based on 'communities'. This is similar to the Google principle of link popularity, but took it a step further by using 'subject-specific popularity' that would determine the ranking of a site based on the number of same subject pages that referenced - or linked - it.

Having received rave reviews for its use of search technology and the quality of results being generated, Teoma was soon acquired by Ask in September 2001 and now powers the search results on this popular tool.

Teoma itself was not widely known or used but continued to offer a 'raw' form of search engine results being presented by Ask Jeeves, until the latter relaunched in February 2006 as just Ask and at this point Teoma was fully absorbed into the new look search tool and is no longer available as a standalone search tool.

To find out how your website can achieve a top ranking on the main search engines, please contact us for more information or to request a FREE website assessment.