Extreme Searcher's Profile of

Teoma

www.teoma.com

Overview

Teoma, is the newest of the Web search engines. It is growing, but at present typically yields less than one-half the number of records that Google finds. As a result, it will probably not be near the top of the list for most searches. It's greatest strength lies in it's "Resources" listing on results pages. These are basically resource guides Teoma has identified and the capability of identifying these makes Teoma unique. In January, 2003, Teoma released a new version, with an Advanced search page, a spell-checker, key-word-in-context (KWIC, "snippets) page descriptions, and enhancements to its relevance ranking algorithm. It also added a considerable number of searchable fields, but many of them cannot be combined (You cannot ask for one word anywhere on the page and another in the word specifically in the title).

Strengths

Weaknesses

Identifies Metasites (Web resource guides)

Good collection of Field search options

Spell checker

Database about half the size of Goolgle and AllTheWeb

Cannot effectively combine fields in a search

What Happens Behind the Scenes

Teoma automatically "AND"s all terms. It also examines retrieved records to identify those that contain a large number of links and places them in the "Resources" section of results pages.

Search Features

Boolean
    Home Page Version

An AND is done automatically. It will only retrieve records retrieved that contain all of the words in your query.
You can use an OR, e.g., maryland OR md

You cannot use an OR and the implied AND together
            A   B OR C will   not give you what one would expect, it gives you "A B" OR C

A NOT is accomplished by use of the minus sign.

Example:    cookies -recipes

    Advanced Search
            Terms in the main "Find" box are "ANDed", "Must Have" and "Should Have" boxes are available
            If you put multiple words with the "should have" option, the words will be treated as a phrase
            Trying to OR words using the boxes has a sometimes unpredictable effect.

Field Searching

       You can search fields using either the Advanced Search page or you can use prefixes.

            Advanced Search Page Field Searching

Using the Advanced Search page, you can search by:

terms in the title

URL

top-level domain (co, edu, gov, etc.)

language (10 of them)

Date page last modified

Geographic area (continent)

    You can use the following prefixes on the home page, but they do not combine well (for example, auction intitle:crumpton   will give you only results with both terms in the title):
        intitle:term
        inurl:term
        site:term
        geoloc:continent    (europeafrica, etc.)
        lang:language
        last:period    (week, 6months, etc.)
        afterdate:yyyymmddd
        beforedate:yyyymmddd
        betweendate:yyyymmddd,yyyymmdd

Phrase Searching

Phrases can be searched by use of quotation marks.
Truncation
Teoma has no truncation capability.
Case Sensitivity
Teoma is not case-sensitive, so it should not be a first-choice when searching many acronyms.

Results Pages

Results are divided into three sections:

Web pages - Sponsored Results (paid listings) followed by ranked Web pages
Refine - suggested narrower searches
Resources - the best part of all, sites that contain a large number of links, hence usually "metasites'"

Special Features