15
April
2005
|
08:48 AM
America/Los_Angeles

As Become.com leaves beta, Michael Yang speaks up on their spam-proof algorithms

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher


becomeLogo.gifThe Become.com shopping search site has come out of beta and has gone beyond 10,000 registered users. No registration is now required to use the site. Company cofounder Michael Yang recently clarified for me some of the anti-spam measures that Become.com has in place around its AIR (Affinity Index Ranking) technology, which is a different approach than Google’s PageRank method.


While it is true that AIR technology is superior to Google's PageRank for preventing spammed pages from showing up on the search result (and in theory it is spam-proof) we can not completely eliminate spams 100% in implementation. Also on the issue of patents for anticipated spam techniques … our patent lawyer recommended that we do [file] but we have not filed yet because we have not identified any spam techniques that would work against AIR.

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