Trend Watch: EveryZing Zooms into Video Search

By David Needle

Out-googling Google isn't for the faint of heart, but upstart EveryZing thinks it can compete successfully with the search giant in certain areas. Cambridge, Mass.-based EveryZing launched two new services Wednesday, ezSEO and ezSearch, that are focused on universal search that includes audio and video as well as text.


Google has made universal search — being able to get results from multiple media types — a cornerstone of its efforts to remain the dominant search provider. EveryZing isn't competing with Google directly for consumer eyeballs; rather, it's targeting media companies who want to provide their visitors with a more comprehensive search experience.

The ezSearch product lets media companies give their users a single integrated search box for audio, video, images and textual content. Once the search results are blended into one index with ezSearch, the company's other new service, ezSEO (Search Engine Optimization) comes into play, making all that content easier to find by other search engines, including Google.

EveryZing manages these services as a hosted solution to facilitate set up and launch. The company already has several media companies using the beta or pre-release version of its services including Boston.com, WEEI.com, Reuters, and Dow Jones.

"Our core pitch is making multimedia discoverable across the Web and then proving user engagement with that content with better search," Tom Wilde, EveryZing CEO, told InternetNews.com. "We can time stamp every word we extract."

An example is the WEEI radio station's Web site. If you missed the interview there with local favorite Tom Brady of the New England Patriots, you could, for example, skip directly to the exact part of the broadcast where he discusses Randy Moss.

"We improve site engagement through better search and if consumers can find what they want quickly, they'll consume more," said Wilde." And then you have an advertising opportunity."

Yankee Group analyst Anton Denisov said he's impressed by the breadth of EveryZing's services and how the company offers to implement them. "I cover the video area and integration is a big question customers ask about any new service," Denisov told InternetNews.com.

"Media companies and advertisers don't care as much about specific technologies, but about what works and is easy to implement. If they've already built something, they don't want to change it," said Denisov.

Trend: Clips Capturing Audiences
Video in particular is rising as a key component of consumer Web sites. Last year, consumers in the U.S. watched an average of two-and-a-half hours of video on the Internet per month, according to Yankee Group. By 2011 the research firm is predicting that number will pole vault to 22 hours per month.

The trick for consumer Web sites is to make to make sure the videos can be easily found so they can maximize their earning potential via ads. Other companies such as Blinkz, offer video search to consumers and EveryZing has its own site for consumers.

"Search in video is off the charts in terms of its importance to the market," said Denisov. "Users are getting a lot more engaged with video, compiling playlists and essentially becoming their own programmers. Online video has matured from the days of watching a cat play the piano on YouTube to a full-fledged media product."

Underpinning EveryZing's products are what it says are unique speech-to-text processing and analysis as well as natural language processing technology it gained as a spin-off of government research giant BBN Technologies.

EveryZing was formerly known as Podzinger, a podcast search engine.

This article by David Needle originally appeared Feb. 28, 2008 at InternetNews.com.