• by Shankar Gupta , July 14, 2005

Adware company Claria announced Wednesday that it's developing a meta-search engine that collects results from search pages around the Web and orders them according to visitor interaction, using metrics such as click-through rates, time spent on a page, and page views.

The idea, according to Claria Chief Marketing Officer Scott Eagle, is to deliver the Web results that are the most relevant, as "voted by the people." Search engines like Google, by contrast, use algorithms to rank pages according to link structures and other factors.

The search engine, dubbed VistaLabs Search--currently is in the alpha phase of development, and not available to the public--indexes the million most popular keywords it has tracked. The tracking data comes from users who have Claria adware installed on their computers.

So far, the method yields some idiosyncratic results. For instance, the top listing for "George Bush" is a site dedicated to political cartoons mocking the President, while his biographical page at Whitehouse.gov comes further down in the results.

According to Eagle, the relatively small number of Web users that have Claria adware on their computers--around 40 million--is preventing the site from gathering metrics on less popular keywords. In order to get the volume of data necessary, Claria must establish partnerships with companies that are "ubiquitous," said Eagle, such as creators of widely distributed toolbar or instant messenger applications.

Claria, which recently terminated its distribution deal with Kazaa, is in talks with "marquee companies," Eagle said. By the first quarter of 2006, Claria will announce new adware distribution partners, he said.

Separately, both Eagle declined to comment on rumors that a possible deal to be acquired by Microsoft had fallen through; Microsoft also declined to comment.