Can new search engine out-search Google?

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Apostolos Gerasoulis has a message for everyone who relies on Google as an online guide: It's time to move on.

Rich Schultz, AP Teoma Technologies' Apostolos Gerasoulis has big plans for his company's new search engine.

On the Web http://www.teoma.com/

After spending the past six months fine-tuning the technology, Gerasoulis and his development team in Piscataway, N.J., are rolling out a souped-up search engine called Teoma and taking dead aim at Google, widely regarded as the best way to find anything on the Web.

"We are the next generation in search," said Gerasoulis, a Rutgers University mathematics professor who has had Google in his sights since founding Teoma in 1999. "Google has reached its maturity."

The souped-up version of Teoma's site is to debut at 8 p.m. ET Monday.

Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., views Teoma as "an interesting approach" to searching, but remains confident its site will continue to provide the quickest, most useful responses, said Craig Silverstein, Google's director of technology.

"We think the jury is still out on how effective (Teoma) is," Silverstein said. "The user interaction required to get where you want to go can be pretty time-consuming."

Analysts say the increased competition should improve the quality of online searches.

"I doubt Teoma will become a Google killer," said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com. "But it could become an interesting second choice, and that should keep Google on its toes."

Teoma isn't the first to try to outdo Google.

Online search pioneer AltaVista launched a copycat site, raging.com, in May 2000 to try to recapture some of the following it lost after Google's emergence. But the site never made significant inroads and AltaVista ended the experiment last year.

Sullivan said Teoma must first prove it's the best among lesser-known search engines, a field that includes alltheweb.com and wisenut.com.

Teoma — a Gaelic term for "expert" — lacked the financial resources to mount a serious challenge to Google until Gerasoulis and fellow owners sold the company to Emeryville, Calif.-based Ask Jeeves for $4.4 million last year.

Since then, Teoma has continued to provide search results on its site, but Ask Jeeves kept the most powerful tools under wraps — until now.

It won't be easy to topple Google, founded in 1998 by Stanford University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Google processes more than 150 million search queries a day through its own site and others, such as Yahoo, that license Google's technology. Google indexes 3 billion Web documents, compared with 200 million for Teoma.

Google users will notice similarities between the sites. Like Google, Teoma offers a mostly blank page broken up by a few bright colors.

Both sites depend on complicated algorithms to analyze search requests, but Teoma says its formula is more effective because it breaks the Web into clusters of online communities. Teoma says this approach categorizes results better and offers more helpful choices.

Teoma also presents links to subcategories that may be related to a topic, as well as a section devoted to "expert" sources.

"When you are looking for something on the Web, we will help you find it, learn about it and investigate it," Gerasoulis said.

Teoma's multilayered approach might overwhelm some Web surfers accustomed to Google's straightforward approach.

"One of the beautiful things about Google is that it really is 'Search for Dummies,' " said industry analyst Rob Lancaster of the Yankee Group. "Teoma is going to have to educate people how to get the most from its site."

Unlike Google's early days, Teoma will have ample marketing muscle.

Ask Jeeves continued to build one of the Web's best-known brands even as its natural-language search engine lost ground to Google and other rivals.

Teoma already boosted Ask Jeeves' main site, which began incorporating the improved technology in mid-December. Since then, Ask Jeeves says, the site saw a 25% increase in clicks on its search results while the rate of people leaving in apparent frustration has declined by 15%.

In the summer, Ask Jeeves plans to license Teoma's search engine to other sites. Licensing is already a successful business for Google, which collected $7.1 million in fees from Yahoo last year.

"Google is always going to be good, but we think we can offer a very viable alternative," said Steve Berkowitz, president of Ask Jeeves' Web properties.