WiseNut
Encyclopedia
WiseNut was a crawler
-based search engine
owned by Looksmart
. It debuted as a beta in July 2001 and was officially launched in September 2001. It used its own database, and when it started it was highly regarded by a number of critics. WiseNut introduced a fresh database and relevant hits. Like Teoma
, WiseNut automatically clustered search results, a technology called WiseGuide.
Despite its good start, WiseNut never managed to become a major search engine. It lacked boolean search in the standard search and other advanced search features. Unlike other search engines, WiseNut did not cache pages.
Looksmart bought the search engine in April 2002 for $9 million with the aim of introducing a major search engine. The revamp was not successful. Despite delivering good relevancy and having a large database of over 1.5 billion URI
s, WiseNut remained a small player.
Wisenut closed for good on 28 September 2007.
Web crawler
A Web crawler is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion. Other terms for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, Web spiders, Web robots, or—especially in the FOAF community—Web scutters.This process is called Web...
-based search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
owned by Looksmart
LookSmart
LookSmart is an online advertising company based in San Francisco. LookSmart provides search advertising products and services to text advertisers, as well as targeted pay-per-click search and contextual advertising via its Search Advertising Network...
. It debuted as a beta in July 2001 and was officially launched in September 2001. It used its own database, and when it started it was highly regarded by a number of critics. WiseNut introduced a fresh database and relevant hits. Like Teoma
Teoma
Teoma, pronounced chawmuh , was an Internet search engine founded in 2000 by Professor Apostolos Gerasoulis and his colleagues at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Professor Tao Yang from the University of California, Santa Barbara co-led technology R&D. Their research grew out of the 1998 DiscoWeb...
, WiseNut automatically clustered search results, a technology called WiseGuide.
Despite its good start, WiseNut never managed to become a major search engine. It lacked boolean search in the standard search and other advanced search features. Unlike other search engines, WiseNut did not cache pages.
Looksmart bought the search engine in April 2002 for $9 million with the aim of introducing a major search engine. The revamp was not successful. Despite delivering good relevancy and having a large database of over 1.5 billion URI
Uniform Resource Identifier
In computing, a uniform resource identifier is a string of characters used to identify a name or a resource on the Internet. Such identification enables interaction with representations of the resource over a network using specific protocols...
s, WiseNut remained a small player.
Wisenut closed for good on 28 September 2007.