New technology on the horizon

• Aug. 11, 2003

You've probably never heard of a company called Kaltix. But if what they propose holds true, you will begin to hear a lot more of them in the months and years to come. Especially if you're on the web.

Let me start by explaining who they are and what they propose to do, and then I can outline what the benefits will be.

The company was formed by 3 members of the Google PageRank research team. PageRank, as we all know, is Google's proprietary algorithm which helps them rank a site's popularity by the number and quality of incoming links it has from other sites. A site with a higher number of good quality links is considered to have a better web reputation and therefore should be a more relevant source of information for a given search.

The company hopes to improve on this technology, by making it faster and better. Since current PageRank recalculations seem to happen every 3 to 6 months we think faster would definitely be better. But how do you make it better?

Kaltix proposes that they can offer a degree of personalization which currently isn't offered by Google PageRank. In other words, the user would define to a certain extent what results are displayed.

By applying the PageRank algorithm (or something similar to it) to the users pre-defined filter, or preferences, the new company boasts the ability to offer each user the most comprehensive, relevant results on the web.

I'm already assuming they have found some way around Google's own non-disclosure agreements, patents etcetera in order to explore this further. If this is the case then Kaltix could be the next web property bought out by a Google rival.

We already know that MSN has Google in their sites. By acquiring technology which is similar, but better than PageRank they could conceivably return results more relevant that Google currently does. Perhaps Yahoo! who also needs some form of relevancy established would buy this company. They are known to buy rather than develop.

Or maybe this is simply a Google spin-off and nothing more - not for sale just built to give it some form of independence in the market, and see what kind of interest it can generate among the big players in the market. Kind of like dangling a piece of fresh meat in front of the eyes of a starving dog then yanking it away at the last minute.

In any case, the future of Kaltix will be bright.

Rob Sullivan
Production Supervisor
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning
specialists