firstRain Receives Patent Approval for Improved Search Technology
30 August 2006
firstRain, a premium research service that provides targeted and relevant information to fuel clients' insights on companies and trends, announced that it has been awarded its second patent, U.S. Patent number 7,080,073, entitled "Method and apparatus for focused crawling."
The patent application was submitted in August 2001 to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and describes various methods for guiding an intelligent, focused crawler to crawl relevant pages while reducing the time normally taken for the activity. The intelligence guiding the focused crawler includes combinations of content analysis and link-structure analysis within the crawling context. These methods enable the crawler to effectively rank and obtain significant results from non-standard documents, regardless of format or markup language.
Expanding on search technology previously developed by Google and Yahoo, the discovery methods can be used in either focused crawlers or search engines. firstRain combines this search technology with an innovative research methodology to provide a customized research service that gives clients a comprehensive view of a company or a trend within its unique market context. firstRain searches thousands of authoritative sources to provide each client with information customized to their investments and insights. This individualized view of critical information helps clients make better business decisions.
firstRain clients gain a distinct advantage over users of generic search technologies, which provide wider, but more shallow coverage of the web and generate fewer relevant results. In a study conducted by firstRain, its premium research service returned three times as many results that were relevant to the core query of a search compared to results generated by Google.
"We are continually innovating firstRain's premium research service to deliver information that is meaningful and relevant to our clients," said Penny Herscher, president and CEO of firstRain. "Our combined patents constitute a technology portfolio that delivers a unique and differentiated solution for asset managers and corporate market intelligence users."
The first patent, received in 2005, covers a search engine for documents as well as subsets extracted from documents using context-sensitive filters and sequences of such documents and subsets. Clients received content that was more directly focused on the crux of their inquiries. The type of search engine described in the patent can restrict itself to searching and analyzing only those pinpointed sections of content that are most relevant to the clients' interests.
"firstRain's patented technology combines market intelligence, data mining, document analysis, web monitoring and search to provide our clients with a truly premium research service," said Gaurav Rewari, co-founder of firstRain. "Our culture is focused on ongoing innovation and clients can expect further advances in technology in the years to come."
About firstRain
firstRain is a premium research service that fuels clients' insights by providing targeted and relevant information on companies and trends, each in their own unique market context. This highly relevant and timely information from across the web-including hard-to-find sources such as sector-specific sources, premium subscription sites, influential blogs and local and international news-enables firstRain clients to make better business decisions more quickly, using fewer resources. firstRain is a privately held company headquartered in Foster City, Calif., with additional offices in New York, NY, Boston, Mass., and New Delhi and Mumbai, India. Contact firstRain at http://www.firstrain.com.
NOTE: firstRain is a registered trademark of firstRain, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Source: prnewswire
All trademarks and copyrighted information contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
Related Articles
|
