Wired Digital,
producer of the HotBot Web navigation
portal, signed a one year licensing agreement to use the Direct Hit
Popularity Engine.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Direct Hit, of Wellesley, Mass., devised a technology that ranks search
engine results according to their popularity with other users. It provides
Web users with a list of the most popular results based
on pages that previous users have chosen after conducting a similar search.
“We’re extremely excited to partner with Wired Digital because their HotBot
site has become such
an important destination on the Web,” said Mike Cassidy, CEO of Direct Hit.
“We’re confident that our technology will further enhance Wired Digital’s
dynamic user experience
in the coming months.”
Users of the Direct Hit service enter their request into the search engine
query box, then click on the Direct Hit button when the results are
returned. The Direct Hit Popularity Engine analyses the activity of
millions of previous Internet searchers, presenting the user with a list of
the most popular sites.
“Direct Hit has hit on an innovative new way for search users to rank
and interpret search results–by popularity,” commented Joel Truher, VP
technology strategy for Wired Digital. “In many cases Direct Hit can
provide an important added value to our users–an extremely
relevant ‘Top 10’ list of results other users have found beneficial for
similar searches.”
