Teragram has announced that AOL has selected its Direct Answers technology for AOL's Quick Answers search function. Direct Answers is able to extract keyword information for a more precise and exact search for information. Teragram helps AOL Quick Answers users to find what they want without having to examine entire documents to provide that information. Teragram Direct Answers works by "grabbing" the essential question and then extracting the most appropriate information from documents. The end user receives a direct answer to a query and can use the supporting documents to gather further information.

When an end-user types a query into a search bar, Direct Answers first determines whether the query is "information-seeking," (i.e., looking for a specific date, number, city name, time, etc.), or whether the query is seeking a link to a specific document or Web site. Direct Answers processes the query by analyzing the request syntactically and semantically to grasp the essential question the end-user is asking. Answers can be retrieved from structured or unstructured data found in hosted primary reference sources that Teragram has aggregated and ranked. They can also be retrieved from primary reference material such as online dictionaries and encyclopedias, news, and other informational Web sites. Teragram's Direct Answer technology can be licensed as a service accessible via high-throughput servers hosted by Teragram, or as licensed software that can be tailored to meet a user's enterprise needs.

(www.teragram.com; www.aol.com)