Jumping into the growing market for content-specific search technologies, Emeryville-based Ask Jeeves, best known for its "humanized" search portal of the same name, announced two new search-related products today at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Francisco.

The Conference is hosted by internet.com.

The first product is the Jeeves' Vertical Popularity Search, which Ask Jeeves says enables specific, targeted search capabilities through the Ask Jeeves engine.

"The technology uses patented Popularity technology (ranking sites based on popularity when returning search results) to rank the results according to the specific interests of the users on a particular site," says Robin Dvorkin, public relations representative for Ask Jeeves. "For example, a user searching on a technology site may enter a query on 'cookies.' Vertical Popularity Search will deliver results about mechanisms that store user information, as opposed to bakery goods."

Vertical search technology is a big play for sites wanting to offer content-specific searching, and a number of business-to-business (B2B) companies are already focusing on the market (see Twirlix or EoExchange, previously profiled on this site).

Other big players have shown growing interest in the vertical market as well. Palo Alto-based AltaVista released a new version of its search software for Webmasters last April, which can also be used to power vertical searches, and Foster City-based Inktomi also offers specialty search services.

Also unveiled today, Ask Jeeves announced the integration of its Popularity technology over the "Open Directory Project", what Dvorkin says is the largest human-edited Internet directory available to date.

"Ask Jeeves Popularity technology allows users to quickly and easily find the most relevant and popular answer to a query within the Open Directory," claims Dvorkin.

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