New search engine 'revolutionary'

A 26-year-old PhD student from the University of New South Wales has patented a new way of exploring the web that could revolutionise existing search engines.

Developed by Ori Allon, the Orion© search engine is designed to complement searches conducted on services such as Google, Yahoo or MSN Search.

Search engines find pages on which keywords occur. Sometimes these pages are important to the topic. Other times they are not.

Orion© finds pages where the content is about a topic strongly related to the key word. It then returns a section of the page, and lists other topics related to the key word so the user can pick the most relevant.

"The results to the query are displayed immediately in the form of expanded text extracts, giving you the relevant information without having to go to the website - although you still have that option if you wish," said Israeli-born Allon, who completed a Bachelor and Masters degree at Monash University in Melbourne before moving to UNSW for his PhD.

"By displaying results to other associated key words directly related to your search topic, you gain additional pertinent information that you might not have originally conceived, thus offering an expert search without having an expert's knowledge.

"Take a search such as the American Revolution as an example of how the system works. Orion© would bring up results with extracts containing this phrase. But it would also give results for American History, George Washington, American Revolutionary War, Declaration of Independence, Boston Tea Party and more. You obtain much more valuable information from every search.

"The idea of finding information without having to click through to websites came from Allon's supervisor, Eric Martin, back in March this year. "I provided the spark. But it is Ori who has developed this through his amazing creativity and sheer hard work over these past months," said Mr Martin.

Andrew Stead of New South Innovations, the technology transfer company within UNSW, says he is confident that Orion© will fill a gap in the market noted by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

"Bill Gates was recently quoted in Forbes magazine as saying that we need to take the search way beyond how people think of it today. We believe that Orion© will do that."

Google exploring new search technique

Google has launched a new search project with an Australian university student, designed to let people view more information per search result without having to click open every link.

Ori Allon, a doctoral student at the University of New South Wales, was recently hired by Google to continue developing his Orion search engine, according to a university representative.

"Ori is an employee of Google, but this is still a university project," the representative noted, adding that Allon works out of the company's California office.

Orion aims to take a keyword and find pages most closely related to the topic and then deliver a portion of that particular page.

"The results to the query are displayed immediately in the form of expanded text extracts, giving you the relevant information without having to go to the Web site--although you still have that option if you wish," Allon said in a previous statement about his technology.

He cited an example of the keyword phrase "American Revolution." The search would not only provide extracts with the phrase, but also additional information on topics such as American history, George Washington and the Declaration of Independence.