IndustryAsk Jeeves To Rebrand Tech As ExpertRank Inside?

Ask Jeeves To Rebrand Tech As ExpertRank Inside?

Gary Price — awesome sleuth that is he — was doing some searching of the
US Patent Office & Trademark Office database
yesterday and noticed that Ask Jeeves
filed for a
trademark
, a service mark to be accurate, for the term "ExpertRank" about a
week ago. Perhaps the sign of a new branding campaign to come?

Ask Jeeves won’t comment on what this means, but Gary reminded me that Teoma
means
"expert" in Gaelic. Teoma is the company Ask
Jeeves
bought
in 2001 and the name of the search technology Ask Jeeves uses for its
search results. I even
joked earlier
about how in the UK, Ask Jeeves has been branding its service as having "new
Teoma technology."

So how about some speculation? Many are familiar with the "Intel Inside"
branding campaign that Intel has run for years. You never see an Intel chip when
you’re using a computer, but the company wants you to have the notion that it’s
a good thing so you’ll seek out Intel machines.

The search wars have their own sort of Intel Inside branding that’s heating
up. Google’s long trotted out
PageRank
as its form of under-the-hood tech that should wow consumers. A few
months ago, MSN rolled out its
Neural Net
technology as both a way to improve its results and to help counter the notion
of Google having all the secret search sauce.

Teoma’s long been the secret sauce for Ask, and ExpertRank sounds like a
rebranding of that (rather than some new tech) to help Ask Jeeves compete with
PageRank Inside and Neural Net Inside.

Where’s Yahoo in all of this? It did roll out a
Web Rank
idea almost two years ago, but that never caught on or was seriously promoted by
the company. But if Yahoo’s going to face PageRank Inside, Neural Net Inside and
ExpertRank Inside, it’s almost a foregone conclusion it will look for something
with a little more oomph than just saying it’s Yahoo Search Technology Inside,
as they did
launching
when launching Yahoo’s own technology in early 2004.

Hmm — maybe My Rank? Since’s Yahoo’s big on the entire
My Web
concept, I can see it now: "New Yahoo Search with My Web And My Rank
Technology."

Postscript from Gary: Let’s not forget that Google trademarked/service marked the term “TrustRank” earlier this year. Also, keeping with the “rank” theme, Topix.net registered the service mark “NewsRank” last year. They also have the service mark “National Network for Local News” registered with the USPTO.

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