KANSAS CITY, Mo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--If you search “New York City” on Google, the returns on the first few pages will focus mostly on tourist sites, basic city information and hotel and restaurant reviews. But what if your purpose for searching was to find a good Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village, or learn more about what rock bands might be playing on the weekend? Now, for the first time, there exists a search engine that delivers visual, socially influenced and more relevant search results – and gives users an amazing experience.
Leap2, a pioneer in web search, announced today that it will launch its newest creation – Leap.it – at SXSW in Austin, Texas this month. A new extension on the company’s visual approach to search, Leap.it takes real-time streams (such as Twitter) and user collaboration and pulls them together into a platform called “Perspectives.” This unique search experience allows users to help determine sets of search results that fit together, instead of just relying on keyword-based algorithms to tell them what is most relevant. The platform also goes a step further by empowering a user to notify anyone in their social network of their own particular perspective and ask for participation.
“Today, when we use a search engine, we type in keywords and a scientific algorithm returns the results that it believes we will be most interested in,” said Michael Farmer, CEO at Leap2. “We believe a user’s ideal search experiences are the ones in which the search engines return results that are relevant and interesting to them – the results they care about. With Leap.it, we are the algorithm, and that makes the results much more satisfying.”
"Leap.it clearly demonstrates that combining visual search with user-collaborated results provides a new way for users to find, sort and share information," said Peter Levinson, senior vice president of WhiteSky and former director of product management at Yahoo! Search.
Leap2 executives, including Farmer, will be in Austin throughout SXSW and are available for site demonstrations, informational interviews and more.
About Leap2
Based in Kansas City, Mo., Leap2 is a
venture-backed startup building new and better search experiences for
Internet users. Leap2's solutions deliver faster and more accurate
answers to search queries by adding real-time social and local context,
and draw upon a multitude of sources: tweets, photos, reviews and more.
By combining the serendipity of Web surfing with the precision of
search, it equips users to make an informed decision fast – exactly what
today's society demands. For more information, visit www.leap2search.com.