Sagoon, (- http://www.sagoon.com ) based in Washington DC, has released the beta version of its new search engine for public testing. Sagoon is founded by two Nepalese American Govinda Giri and Shiba Dhakal.

The key idea behind the Sagoon technology - "Word Space Model" - is to promote semantic search over the regular lexical search to provide more meaningful information to users. This is done by analyzing the content of Web data and news documents to find out hidden similarities among them. The implementation of "semantic analysis" requires a series of algorithms and mathematical calculations.

The Sagoon's results cover a number of resources for variety in the results. The results are obtained from a combination of Sagoon's index, Yahoo Boss, and some of the larger search companies in the online information industry. Search results organized by ideas and concepts provide results based on Web page content analysis. Search results also offer organized features such as tabs to clarify subjects, news display groups, and the most relevant queries to explore more topics. This helps in guiding the users to the desired results with just one mouse click. 

Follow the link for complete press release.
- http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/sagoon-a-new-web-search-engine-launches-beta-version-85122.php

And those saying the results are leeched from google: look again. Those are google sponsored links. These guys are pretty smart by trying to raise some revenue off google's tormenting rivers of AdSense/AdWords.

Interesting.  My congratulations to the people behind Sagoon.  I hope they get funded.  I will definitely be watching, and cheering, their progress.

ps -  there will certainly be detractors.  Aafuley pani garnu nasakney, aruley gareko pani dekhi-nasahaney.  One has to keep one's eyes on the ball, I suppose, and not get discouraged.

Full_maya (Aa. ja. su.) jee

I have one guru mantra for you.  "Little knowledge is dangerous."

Please keep that mantra it your mind before throwing your ignorant comment on us. My advice for you is to keep quiet if you possess no or little knowledge on any subject. If you keep on blabbering and disrespect others’ genuine work then you will be tagged as an arrogant person who knows nothing but $hit. And what ever you comment here will be treated as stinky $hit coming out from your rotten mouth.

 

Full_maya (Aa. ja. su.) jee

I have one guru mantra for you.  "Little knowledge is dangerous."

Please keep that mantra it your mind before throwing your ignorant comment on us. My advice for you is to keep quiet if you possess no or little knowledge on any subject. If you keep on blabbering and disrespect others’ genuine work then you will be tagged as an arrogant person who knows nothing but $hit. And what ever you comment here will be treated as stinky $hit coming out from your rotten mouth.

I'm not one of the two individuals who founded Sagoon but since I started the thread and I happen to know some inside information, I would like to thank you guys for your feedback and answer few questions as well.

The technology (algorithm) behind Sagoon is different from other search engines. The algorithm is developed by two professors from IIT and Stanford University. The algorithm 'Random Vector Model' supposed to search words as well as the meaning of the words to provide more accurate and meaningful information to users.  I'm not sure if I can disclose further info, so I leave at this now.

Working closely with the professors, these two Nepalese individuals have decided to outsource the programming part to an Indian company for obvious reasons - low costs, proven skills and outstanding services. The whole world has recognized it and we should accept the fact lightheartedly. So, let's not start name calling. Good and evil don't follow the boundary of race, ethnicity, country, religion, community, or family. Let's be open and accept the good and reject bad regardless of its origin.

Another good point to note is that these individuals have limited resources in terms of funding and contacts. The developers are still refining the codes but they decided to go live for testing. So, judge the site based on what results you get instead of comparing it to multi-billion dollar companies. If everything goes as expected, they will have their own ads, news, and what not! Until then any revenue that comes from google ads is a plus. In the near future they expect to have partnerships with Nepalese businesses and technical experts to take it to the next level. In the mean time, I encourage all readers to test, break, hack, and do all you can so that developers can refine the product. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Good going guys. I hope it is good start for all nepalese genious we have around the world. Best of luck.

P.S. for Full Maya mahodaya:
Testo kehi tapain le banaunus aani comment garnus hai, tyo bhanda aagadi mukh ma bujho laayera basnus.
Dhanyabaad.

नेपालका सुपुत्रहरुलाई स्यालुट गर्छु। हौसला दिनै पर्छ, सतप्रयासहरुमा। समालोचना गरौं, आलोचना भन्दा।

तर यो पनि न भुलौं, नेपाल मा धेरै चोटि धेरैले झुक्याएका छन, छक्क्याएका छन। नानी भन्दा........ के ठुलो भने जस्ताइ मेडियाबाट हल्ला गर्ने चल्लाहरु धेरै छन।

कम्पुटर बनाए भन्ने देखी लिएर गाडी को इमिशन घटाऊने गफाडी चटके हरु धेरै देखेको छु।
म काम गर्ने संस्था संग गार्बेज को दुर्गन्ध हटाउने केमिकल देखी लिएर गाडी को इमिशन ९९% घटाऊने कथित बैज्ञानिकहरुले लाखौं रुपैया लुटे।

त्यसैले सत्कर्म गर्ने हरु पनि यही शंकाको लंकामा जलौन खोज्नु नौलो होइन।

र पनि नेपाल आमाका सुपुत्रहरु प्रती सधैं नतमस्तक नै रहन्छु। जय नेपाल।
 

kudos to new enterpreneurs,

btw, one do not have to be an insider to figure out basically
a. by reading news and press release other news
b. IEEE access to publications

to find out what they have been using

and btw,
c. does it do anything more than using api of Yahoo! BOSS and directing traffic to Yahoo! search to get the result?

for most user it may appear a lot different when they search from sagoon.com because they have been used to or have been using google.com (google search ever since)

but anyone using search.yahoo.com should be able to pin-point the similarities in output of search. 

I guess they r the only ones using that algo..genious..

Most Nepalese have no work and know only know how to talk. Read the press release (below) before you make quick assumptions about this being an Indian company by just looking at the regional office.

Even if it is an Indian company founded by Nepalese, what is the big deal? In this day and age, you cannot be successful unless you can work with people from different countries and backgrounds. It is even more impressive if they are smart enough to use low cost labor in India to produce a high quality product.

 I do not think how search results of Sagoon is different than other search enginies and I doubt it will even make a dent in search engine business. However, I still admire all entrepreneurship efforts by anyone (especially our countrymen). All the great companies including Microsoft, Google, etc. started from a scratch by people who had dreams and took risks. Congratulations to the founders.

Washington DC, January 28, 2009 /EIN News/ -- Sagoon, (www.sagoon.com) based in Washington DC, has released the beta version of its new search engine for public testing.

The Internet is reaching more and more people every day. Millions of people visit it every second to contribute information or to search for it. Surfing the Internet has become a part of most everyone's daily routine. There is an increasing demand to provide information on the Web in innovative and user-friendly ways, as well as to provide businesses the opportunity to flourish online in the most cost-effective manner. Sagoon was founded by two IT professionals Mr. Govinda Giri and Mr. Shiba Dhakal with the purpose of fulfilling these goals.

The key idea behind the Sagoon technology - "Word Space Model" - is to promote semantic search over the regular lexical search to provide more meaningful information to users. This is done by analyzing the content of Web data and news documents to find out hidden similarities among them. The implementation of semantic analysis requires a series of algorithms and mathematical calculations.

The Sagoon's results cover a number of resources for variety in the results. The results are obtained from a combination of Sagoon's index, Yahoo Boss, and some of the larger search companies in the online information industry. Search results organized by ideas and concepts provide results based on Web page content analysis. Search results also offer organized features such as tabs to clarify subjects, news display groups, and the most relevant queries to explore more topics. This helps in guiding the users to the desired results with just one mouse click.

"We are planning an aggressive growth for the company and its technology so that we can continue providing the best search experience on the Web,"says Govinda Giri, founder and chief of Sagoon Inc. "I have a dream of making Sagoon a world class search engine with different user experiences. This beta marks our first step towards eventually creating a diverse direction in searching the Web."

Sagoon's various services like Web search, News Search, Video Search, Directory and Classifieds search are novel approaches towards storing resources and information from all over the world. Sagoon is also in the process of developing other niche products with innovative business ideas and approaches which have not been seen on the market yet.

Elixir Web Solutions, a New Delhi based interactive media and Technology Company was selected to develop Sagoon's technology. "Our company was chosen to execute this highly ambitious project and our team has lived up to Mr. Giri's expectations in developing a world class search engine. In fact, the portal is much more than just a search engine and the product also contains a series of sections. In executing this project, we have got a good opportunity to demonstrate our technical expertise and for continued development, there are many more exciting features lined up for Sagoon. Mr. Giri is a person with great vision and I believe Sagoon has the potential to become a market leader," - said Mohit Sareen, Elixir's Founder and CEO.

Sagoon's chief developer Manish Kumar says "Our team approaches Web search differently. By leveraging our expertise in search architecture and relevance methods, we've built a more efficient search engine which is richer than display keyword search." He says, "We are in the process of adding unique features to Sagoon such as semantic search and natural language processing. This way we will be providing artificial intelligence which can understand what exactly the user is looking for, thus offering them the best quality content which they can get on the Web."

Features:
Sagoon search engine features clean Web page half-box layout style that separates results by subject, and allows further search by category. Tabs and group in Web results clarify search topics displaying the most relevant results.

About Sagoon
Sagoon is a privately owned company based in Washington DC. It is dedicated to providing a new window for Web search that combines the largest Web index with content-based relevance methods and organized results. Sagoon derives its name from Sanskrit Shakuna meaning auspicious or ushering good results. This christening reflects Sagoon's sincere wish that the exploration of information and resources on the site ushers in good luckand augurs well for all businesses and users. For more information, please visit www.sagoon.com.

Media contacts:
Sagoon Inc.
Govinda Giri
571-239-4710
girig@sagoon.com

Let me chip in again.

Its true, that they're using Yahoo BOSS and may be something like ht-dig for their own servers for indexing. Thats fine. Yahoo's search engine is so far the best one and they using the openly provided API is absolutely praiseworthy!

So when you type in a search keyword "Are we stupid" , the algorithm should query, Yahoo, its own index, Google or whoever and get us the results with "Yes, you are - any doubts?"! Thats called Semantic Searching, and i commend them bringing the idea. And the release says, you're still working on it or shall work on it! "we are also in the process of adding unique features by developing semantic search and natural language processing."

Can we know whats the traffic coming into it , over the past day ? Most of them should be from India as it is on Press Releases on Indian Papers - and of course, Sajha! I just hope that you guys avoid the unavoidables as such happened to measurementtools which Google announced yesterday!

Good Luck.

LOL @Sleepless "Are we stupid". What a great way of explaining how semantic search works.

Now I'll never forget :).

and I have no doubts :P

The most ironic part of Sagoon is that they are using GOOGLE ADs to fund their company. If you run a search you see google ads on the right hand side of the search results. One search engine competitor advertising another search engine ads!

@ne0: I guess that serves a dual purpose as well. The more people use Sagoon, the more money they make through those google ads. And also beneficial to google because those ads are triggered by the user's search input. So if they don't find what they want on Sagoon, you can be rest assured its peeking at them through those Google ads. Win-Win situation!

Nice Job....

Well done guys and best of luck.

Mero nam sanga nai mildo rahecha kati chu lagera basanu.

Well wisher,

Sagun

Great work and all the best for future

kudos for being the entrepreneur once again.

sleepless jyu,

Traffic Rank for
Sagoon.com:

Alexa traffic rank based on a combined measure of page views and users (reach)

Yesterday	1 wk. Avg.	3 mos. Avg.	3 mos. Change
N/A*	2,936,388	4,208,206	--

jfyi,
unique and intersting thing that i found is:
a. using random vector model on semantic searching.

talking about semantic searching :
a. they are not the first one to come up with the idea. google has its own on works ever since. and even now when you do a search in google they do provide it at the bottom of the page. [ granted that they may/might not be doing for the whole search in quotes ] . may be this old article may shed some light: http://searchengineland.com/google-to-push-semantic-search-in-2009-16295

b. if you look for research projects handled by umd (university of maryland) then you would figure out that semantic search has been in the works for some time

c. powerset was bought up by microsoft sometime ago

d. hakia has been there kicking butt already.

and formost sleepless jyu, while you explained semantics. can you also explain indexing. lets hear what happens in indexing as well.

Keep 'em coming!

Thapap,

I can but give you a glimpse of what happens. I have no in-depth knowledge either, but i know where to go if i need to find them.

A generic search engine open source software that i used once was - ht-dig! It basically uses Digging, Merging and Searching techniques to crawl-index-search websites. Check out more at htdig.org

So the engine starts with crawling "SPIDER" that traverses across every links they find. Then, they maintain an 'index' of words, titles, headings or the page itself to the URL they traversed. Most of the times, webmasters have their Meta-Tags and keywords that help the spider to get their websites *crawled*.  Webmasters can as well use Robots.txt file to deny crawling access to specific areas within their domain.

The win scenario for Sagoon:

Yahoo Boss! does it all within some parts of a second. The idea to present the user with what sagoon thinks the user is looking for - constitutes of all the efficiency - Sagoon would be looking forward to now. Eventually, they'd have their indexes and their complexities as they mention they have their own bots crawling around. Maintaining indexes, searching across with minimal possible overhead has many researches associated alongside. Like the Map-Reduce that Google uses for processing across large clusters of indexing servers.

I would, along with you, go to research.yahoo.com to read more about the search technologies further. But its not in my itinerary.