Searching the Kosmix
By Azam on December 8, 2008 
Kosmix the search based result on topics has raised $20M in funding lead by Time Warner. The company is launching a redesigned version of the Kosmix search engine for beta testing. The business model is ad driven based on topics and relevant displayed sponsored modules will appear with search results.
Kosmix approach to search is interesting that it focus on topics of interest and gives results based on most relevant to the topic of interest.
Ad Model
Kosmix plans to roll out the Ad model next year which will mixed in with the links and media that Kosmix pulls from around the web and will display sponsored modules tailored to different topics. Kosmix will likely charge based on users interactions and users engagements with those modules. In the future plans, Kosmix will experiment with customization: personalized Kosmix home pages and the ability to prioritize certain kinds of modules.
Example from VentureBeat
The key, says founder Anand Rajaraman, is that Kosmix uses a sophisticated taxonomy for classifying each query and determining which information modules are most appropriate. For example, if I bring up the page for television show Gossip Girl, I get an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry, thumbnail images of YouTube videos, links to The New York Times Book Review (uh, what?) and more. In some cases, you can even get links to the Google and Mahalo results.
Earlier, the company built sites about specific “vertical” topics — health, automobiles and travel. The RightHealth site has been a hit, accounting for many of Kosmix’s 11 million monthly visitors, but the RigthAutos and RightTrips sites are being folded into the home site. Kosmix’s strategy is all about the central site now, Rajaraman says, but RightHealth is too successful to shut down. The main site launched without much fanfare in June, and with the facelift, it now offers more modules.
Kosmix has raised a total of $ 55M till date. The recent $20M raised was lead by Time Warner and previous investors Accel, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Dag Ventures also participated in the new funding, as did Ed Zander, former chairman and chief executive of Motorola.
Reading List
VentureBeat Kosmix’s new approach to search gets $20M
TechCrunch Kosmix Raises $20M Moe For ITS Universal Search Engine
Categories : Media & Ads, TechTags : Accel, Anand Rajaraman, DAG Ventures, Ed Zander, Google, Kosmix, Light Speed Ventures, Mahalo, Right Health, Search