Having conducted early research into the strategies and benefits of Implicit User Modeling for Personalized Search, we are pleased to announce that ChengXiang Zhai, Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has joined Surf Canyon’s Board of Advisers. ChengXiang received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Nanjing University in 1990 […]

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The research team at Cornell University, headed by Professor Thorsten Joachims, has produced another paper relating to Surf Canyon entitled “Structured Learning of Two-Level Dynamic Rankings.” It was presented on October 26, 2011 at CIKM in Glasgow. This paper further explores the concept of “Dynamic Ranked Retrieval” by proposing a two-level dynamic ranking model: For […]

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This week Brandon McMullin started work at Surf Canyon as a Software Engineer. He will focus primarily on the development of our new social search application, Chummo. In addition to his passion for software engineering, Brandon studies Shorinji Kempo, an art that focuses on personal improvement and the balance between strength and compassion. He is […]

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Last month, the High Tech Practice at McKinsey & Co., one of the most prestigious global management consulting firms, authored “Impact of Internet Technologies: Search” which “examines the value of technologies used to navigate the Internet and is part of a series that focuses on different, Internet-related technologies.” Surf Canyon is honored to be one […]

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Surf Canyon is proud to be a sponsor of the Fifth Annual International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM 2012). After having our research selected for oral presentation at SIGIR ’09 in Boston and then having attended other academic conferences, we have a strong appreciation for the effort and dedication required to produce […]

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Mark Cramer, CEO of Surf Canyon, has been selected to present at the exclusive Search Insider Summit to be held at the South Sea Island Resort on Captiva Island, Florida from May 4 to 7. The semiannual event is chaired by Gord Hotchkiss, CEO of Enquiro, and “brings the best minds in the search industry […]

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In August of last year, Gordon Hotchkiss, CEO of Enquiro and one of the most respected voices in search, interviewed Mark Cramer, CEO of Surf Canyon about “Search as a Conversation.” Today Search Engine Land published “Five Visionaries Sum Up the Future of Search” where Gordon highlights some insights from conversations he has had with […]

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As the fans of Surf Canyon are already aware, last year we beat out Google, Yahoo! and Bing to win the 2010 About.com Reader’s Choice Award for “Best Search Engine.” For 2011 we are proud to announce that we have been nominated in the category “Best Overall Add-on (Non-security).” The competition, however, is extremely stiff: […]

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There has been a bit of discussion recently about how content farms (websites that use low-cost labor to churn out pages of little or mediocre quality) are polluting the results on the major search engines. Blekko, a new search engine that enables users to slash the web, has been among those leading the charge by […]

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On December 31st we bid farewell to our spacious, wood-floored offices above a silk shop near downtown Oakland for a brand new set of digs at a co-working facility in San Francisco near 10th and Mission. The new space is excellent, the people are friendly and we’re excited about the next chapter in our journey. […]

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