August 8, 2006

Topix.net has launched its news search platform which can look for news stories and trends over a one-year archived index.

Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal today ran into Chris Tolles at Search Engine Strategies and he got updated on Topix's new search direction which the company claims is the largest news index online.

Topix.net’s News Search Engine indexes 50,000 main stream news sources along with hand picked and human reviewed blogs covering small-town news around the U.S. in a way other news aggregator and search systems cannot.

One interesting feature with Topix.net News Search is its case sensitive search, which makes searching for news on terms like “IT” or “MIT” a lot easier.

In addition, the news trends visualization brings instant definition of the depth behind their index.

Searches for Katrina or Hezbollah reveal obvious news-oriented peaks where as such natural disaster searches as tornado or flooding reveal the improtance of Topix.net’s coverage to small town America.

Prior functionality from the existing Topix.net Search Product has also been maintained, including matching topics, the ability to segregate news and blogs in the results and time stamps of publication dates of the results.

Along with search and niche local and topical news profiles, Topix.net has also entered the direction of a dynamic community of local users, giving their audience the ability to comment, review or add additional information to news coverage.

Loren Baker hopes to have more about the new Topix.net and its new direction troughout the SES Conference.

Source: Search Engine Journal