WAND Inc. and Telegate Create State-of-the-Art German Local Search

WAND's German language local search taxonomy eliminates 70% of the failed searches for local search and directory assistance provider Telegate. Telegate's search at 11880.com is returning more relevant and more complete results to users than ever before.

Denver, CO (PRWEB) October 11, 2007 -- Powered by the semantic content and expertise of WAND, Inc., Local Search and DA provider Telegate (http://www.11880.com) now offers Germany's state-of-the-art search for local businesses. WAND provided more than 180,000 German keywords pointing to Telegate's system of about 8,000 headings. This database of keywords was tailored to fit Telegate's specific needs and business rules, enabling users to get relevant results for almost every conceivable search, while simultaneously increasing the exposure of businesses and advertisers.

A query log analysis revealed that previous to using WAND's semantic content, Telegate suffered from a considerable number of failed searches. As happens with many local search providers, almost 40% of all category searches produced no results, leaving ten thousands of users unsatisfied each day. "It was a dilemma for us. We knew the requested information was in our database, but users were not able to find it because they were not aware of the wording of our business categories," Michael Geiger, Head of Data Management Services at Telegate, stated. In fact, the more information a user provided by filling in the What?, Who? and Where? boxes, the slimmer their chances became of getting results.

Geiger further explained the process of working with WAND, "In order to solve the problems, WAND matched our business categories to their local search taxonomy. As a result of this matching process we received a vast amount of synonyms which we could include in our database. In parallel, WAND analyzed our query logs of the last six months in order to find missed searches and extract additional search words to include into their taxonomy. The integration project was executed by WAND's German partner within three month, and after testing and refining the results we were able to successfully launch it without problems after another four weeks. We really enjoyed the professional and uncomplicated cooperation with WAND and their German partner."

As a result of integrating WAND's German Local Search taxonomy, Telegate's failed searches were significantly reduced; more than two out of three searches that previously failed now lead to the best results available. In addition, similar searches now produce consistent results on Telegate's Local Search.

Geiger concluded by saying that, "Now it doesn't matter any more if our users search for pizza, spaghetti or cannelloni -- they will always receive the local list of Italian restaurants. With WAND's help we are finally able to provide our customers the outstanding service quality they expect from the well-known 11880 brand. In order to keep it like this we will have regular updates to the query log analysis and WAND's constantly improved taxonomy."

WAND's taxonomy is available in eleven languages and is used by local search and e-commerce companies throughout the Internet.

About Telegate AG:
Telegate is a leading supplier of information services in Europe. The company was founded in 1996 and in 1999 was successfully listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange (ISIN: DE0005118806). Apart from the expansion of innovative services for consumers and business customers, the drive into other European countries is the focal point of the company's strategic orientation. After Germany, Telegate has today successfully established itself in Austria, France, Italy and Spain. In the fiscal year of 2006 the Telegate Group achieved total revenues of around 180 million Euro, thereby attaining an annual net income of 6 million Euro.

About WAND, Inc.:
Since 1995, WAND (http://www.wandinc.com) has developed structured multi-lingual vocabularies with related tools and services to power precision search and classification applications on the Internet. From our custom travel, jobs and skills, and medical taxonomies to our cornerstone and product and service taxonomies, WAND's taxonomies are well-structured, deep, precise, and best in class. In addition to licensing its taxonomies for integration into third party applications, WAND leverages its taxonomies internally to build, precision online horizontal and vertical business directory applications. Powered by WAND directory applications have been matching buyers and seller on the internet since 1996. WAND serves customers on five continents.

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