Local Business Directory Search In 2005, GenieKnows entered the search engine market with a local business directory search engine. Targeting only the
United States in its
beta release, the local search engine is similar to
Google Maps but uses the proprietary GeoRank algorithm to associate potentially uncategorized web pages containing addresses with businesses listed in an
internet Yellow Pages directory by extracting addresses and
geocoding these to identify
geographic coordinates for which it associates the web page. On February 29, 2008, GenieKnows Local was launched as a completely revised local search engine extending beyond the 100 most populous
US cities covered in its beta release. The local search engine utilizes processed municipal business data, road network data, national park data, and geocoding technology to provide localized search results ranked according to a business's relevance to a user's web query. As of the February 2008 release, the engine covers over 90% of
Canadian and US municipalities with populations above 1000 residents. According to SEO and search marketing commentator Jim Hedger, GenieKnows' strongest, most unusual and important product is its local search engine.
Vertical Search Engine GenieKnows entered the vertical search market in 2006 with a vertical search engine for
video games-related web pages and another for health-related web pages. Web pages often describe or discuss a particular topic. In
information retrieval and
machine learning literature, classification algorithms have been used to automatically identify the subject matter of a web page. GenieKnows uses such algorithms as a
focused crawler to download
web pages, identify pages that are on topic with the vertical, then
index and save those pages. The result is a search engine that contains only web pages that are on a given topic, tailoring to a niche market of web users who have an interest in a given topic, so all pages returned for a query will be on topic with the vertical being used. For revenue generation, the engine displays advertisements beside the search results from a network of advertisers where it receives
pay per click. GenieKnows is collaborating with
Yahoo! to display targeted, contextualized advertisements to a targeted market of users. In February 2008, GenieKnows added
online community functionality to its vertical search engine. Users sharing interest in a topic can communicate and contribute content to the site in a manner similar, but on a smaller scale, to those of
Facebook, and
Yahoo. == Company ==