Details are emerging on a new algorithm called Edison from Ask. The news broke at SES this week, here’s a good overview post from SEO by The Sea.
From what I can grok quickly (I am supposed to offline, of course) this is an update/revision/combination/evolution of Ask’s previous algos from Teoma and Direct Hit. Buzz is it’s a strong step forward. More to come on this as it reveals….
From a statement from Ask found on SEL:
Edison is still in development, so we can’t say too much at this juncture. I can tell you that it’s a next generation algorithm that, among many other things, synthesizes modernized versions of Teoma and DirectHit technologies, as AG said this morning. It’s much more complicated than saying we’re just counting clicks, in the case of DirectHit. The technologies we have, and the patents we hold, go way beyond that. We’re also taking a deeper look at communities and calculating the authorities in those communities. We were really inspired by looking into the universe of user behavior, and what that could tell us, and the social fabric of the Web itself, and what that tells us.