Topix.net today announced that it has been selected by Ask Jeeves to provide news to Ask Jeeves (Ask.com) for its Local News channel.

Through this partnership, Ask Jeeves becomes the first major search engine to feature Topix.net’s news technology.

Topix.net provides visitors to Ask Jeeves access to local news gathered from over 7,000 sources. Unlike any other news aggregator, Topix.net provides localized news for over 32,500 U.S. and international localities. Ask Jeeves’ utilization of Topix.net includes the use of NewsRank, Topix.net’s algorithmic story editing technology, which improves the user experience by leveraging a set of semantic category filters to improve the relevancy of the news selection in favor of major and interesting stories.

“Connecting our users to local news with Topix.net is something we’re very excited about here at Ask Jeeves,” said Jim Lanzone, Senior Vice President of Search Properties at Ask Jeeves. “Getting relevant and timely local news to our users is an important part of our local strategy.”

For partners interested in subject specific or locally relevant news, Topix.net licenses its news aggregation technology, giving any web site the ability to integrate contextually relevant content onto their site, increasing page views and repeat visitors. Topix.net distributes news organized by topic and location for over 150,000 categories, enabling web sites to be able to feature news that matters to their users.

“We’re excited to provide Ask Jeeves’ users with neighborhood-level local news,” said Topix.net Chief Executive Officer Rich Skrenta. “By featuring the news we aggregate from every newspaper, radio and TV station, and thousands of other sources, Ask Jeeves users will be able to quickly find the news that matters to them.”

Powering news for over 1,500 web sites, Topix.net has the richest and most comprehensive syndicated news solution available today.

Murdok | Breaking eBusiness News
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