Frequently Asked Questions

What is Topix.net?

Topix.net is the Internet's largest news site, with over 300,000 topically based, micro-news pages presenting stories from more than 10,000 sources. Each of these micro-news pages is focused on one particular subject or locality. For instance, Topix.net has separate pages devoted to each of the 30,000 cities and towns in the US, individual pages for every company, industry, health condition, sports team, university, celebrity and thousands of others. Combining our unique approach to presenting topical news and the intuitive navigation tools available for moving from page to page, Topix.net offers users the quickest and most comprehensive way to find all the news that matters to them. It's as easy as we say: pick your Topix, get the news.

Who is Topix.net's target audience?

With over 300,000 topically based, micro-news pages, Topix.net's target audience is anyone looking for news about the people, places and things that are unique to them. So whether you are interested in finding all the news about your community, your company or industry or even your favorite team or celebrity, Topix.net makes it easier than ever.

Who is on Topix.net's management team?

The Topix.net management team has a wealth of experience in data mining, data extraction and artificial intelligence technologies. The team includes the founders of the first and largest open development directory for the Internet, the Open Directory Project (ODP). This project is now a property of AOL and is the source from which many of the current Web directories, including Google's directory, derive their information.

How does Topix.net's differentiate itself from other news aggregators?

Topix.net differentiates itself through its presentation of targeted micro-news. Other news aggregators present news in two ways: (1) categorized into a handful of very broad subjects (e.g. sports, business, etc.) and/or (2) as keyword search results. Both of these approaches are time consuming since users must sift through non-relevant stories in order to find the news that interests them. For instance, a user looking for news on IBM could scan the business section of one or more publications for stories on IBM. Alternatively, he or she could go to a news aggregator and search for the term "IBM." This search will yield thousands of results, many of which would be only references to "IBM", not stories about IBM. In both cases it is up to the user to spend his or her time sifting through the non-relevant articles to find the stories that are really about IBM.

Topix.net takes a completely different approach. The Topix.net proprietary technology provides a concept-based method towards categorizing news, not keyword based. As a result, a reader of one of Topix.net's topical news pages is presented with only articles about that particular topic, not stray references. In other words, the Topix.net IBM news page contains only stories really about IBM.

Does Topix.net have an "Editorial Voice"?

Topix.net does not use human editors when constructing its news pages, but rather relies on its technology to do the work. As a result, there is no slant to the news, other than a proclivity to hard news.

Topix.net does not surface much in the way of meta-analysis of the news or editorial opinion.

Why did I see an announcement from my police/health/OSHA department on Topix.net?

Beyond just crawling traditional news sources, Topix.net is also gathering alerts from local police departments, reports from health inspection agencies, OSHA releases, town notices, etc. Not every town has yet modernized their web presence to make this information directly available to citizens (and web crawlers), but when we find a web-enabled town, we add these types of sources as a resource to include on the appropriate news pages. (If you know of any we seem to have missed, please let us know and we will add them).

News stories on neighboring towns look the same -- what's up?

News is sorted by distance from each particular the city page, with local news appearing as stories within a maximum of a 10-mile radius. When you look at adjacent towns the stories often are very similar, since you haven't traveled very far from your previous location. In theory, by clicking on towns on the "Nearby Towns" box on a local page, a user should be able to click from one end of the country to the other, seeing the "local" news at every point along the way. As an experiment, try clicking on random states & towns from our "Change Cities" page (http://www.topix.net/localnews). That will help show the breadth of local news that Topix.net is presenting.

How do I navigate through the news pages on Topix.net?

Navigating through Topix.net was designed to be very intuitive. There are five primary navigation methods:

Navigation Fly-outs: Located on the left side of each page, clicking on any one the buttons (Business, sports, entertainment, etc.) will send you to the news roll up for that particular category. Clicking on the Local tab will, on your first visit, take you to a page prompting you to enter your city, state or ZIP or find a city using the map. Once you have entered this information you will go to the local news page for that particular city or town. News channels that you visited will collect under each section for future reference. So, once you find your regular stops within Topix.net, those news-pages are only one click away.

Left column: Once you are within any of particular category, the left hand column will list related news-pages. For instance, within any business page, the left column will list all of the industry news-pages available. On any local page, the left hand column will show a listing of local sports team's news-pages, nearby town news pages and community resources.

Story links: Underneath certain stories, there are links to other news-pages that are specifically related to that particular article. For instance, an article about the newest movie coming out may very well list underneath it a link the star's news-page or to that particular movie's news-page.

Related Pages Box: Often times, on the lower left navigation, there is a box containing links to other news-pages that are related to the particular page you are reading. For instance, if you are on the accounting industry page, the related page box contains links to the Topix.net corporate governance news-page, the financial services news-page, et. al.

How do I search Topix.net for topics?

Searching Topix.net is as easy as typing your query into the search box at the top of the left hand column and clicking the submit button. For most searches you will get three distinct results. First, you will be shown those Topix.net news-pages whose titles closely match your search query. For example, a search for "Yankees" will show that four news pages closely match that query, the "New York Yankees" news page being one. In addition, the three separate news pages devoted to three minor league teams nicknamed "Yankees" will show also up. As a second search result, you will be shown the list of Topix.net news-pages that are related to your search query. For instance, the search term "linux" will show that indeed Linux has its own news page, but also that there are separate news pages for software, computers, etc. which are related to the query "linux." The final search result is the complete list of articles that contain your search query as a keyword.

How do I link to a local page by zipcode?

You can link to one of our pages by zipcode with the following link: http://www.topix.net/search?jumpsearch=1&jq;=ZIPCODE Replace ZIPCODE with the 5 digit zip of the city to which you wish to link. For example:

http://www.topix.net/search?jumpsearch=1&jq;=44240 is a link to the Kent, OH web page.

Why did I find a mis-categorized story?

At times, Topix.net's AI engine is confused by ambiguous names and references. We're continually making improvements to the categorization accuracy and our Knowledge Base to eliminate as many of the remaining errors as possible. But we aren't perfect yet. If you see a persistent categorization error on one our pages, it would be helpful to us if you could let us know. Please include the Topix.net page you were on and the URL for the story that was inappropriate on that page.

How does Topix.net's plan to maintain its competitive edge?

Topix.net's engineers have developed a patent-pending artificial intelligence (AI) and categorization engine as a platform for the site. This engine yields a much higher accuracy rate than traditional academic AI. Topix.net is constantly improving this technology and will be introducing new features.

Why should an advertiser choose Topix.net? What is the value proposition/ customer benefits?

By presenting content that is concentrated on a specific topic, Topix.net provides advertisers the opportunity to reach a highly targeted audience. No business wants to spend money on an advertisement that will be broadcast to people who will never be a customer. For example, a local pizza shop in Norman, OK realizes no value from money spent on an advertisement that is read by those outside the Norman, OK area. He wants his ad to be read by his potential customers only. Topix.net presents this opportunity. The Topix.net Norman, OK news page, by nature of its highly localized content, is read predominantly by those living in Norman, OK area. As a result, an advertisement on this page will allow the pizza shop to maximize its advertising budget. This same logic applies to someone who only wants to target a specific age or taste demographic. By using Topix.net's highly targeted content, the advertiser can be sure their ad is reaching their potential customers.

In addition, because of the dynamic nature of the content on Topix.net's news pages, advertisers can be certain that their message will be viewed repeatedly. By contrast, an advertiser that purchases a search engine keyword usually receives value only one time. For instance, someone shopping for umbrellas on a search engine would likely run that search one time - at which point the advertisers message would be seen. But a Seattle, WA resident will repeatedly come back to the Topix.net Seattle, WA news page to read the latest news, and thus be exposed to that umbrella advertisers message repeatedly throughout the day.

What other services does Topix.net offer?

In addition to traditional banner and text ad advertising, Topix.net offers page sponsorships and sponsor included articles. Should a company want to ensure that its press release is featured or its white paper showcased, Topix.net provides that service. Topix.net also syndicates its categorized news feed to other web-site owners. Click Here for more information.

Finally, as Topix.net's technology is extremely adaptable, its categorizing capabilities are available to customers for other uses aside from categorizing news.

How do I advertise on Topix.net?

Click here for all of our advertising information.

Click here for information about news source inclusion.

Has Topix.net formed partnerships with other companies?

Topix.net is partnering with several outside entities to provide content to Topix.net users. Topix.net has partnered with Louis Border's latest venture, KeepMedia, Inc., whereby Topix.net will showcase KeepMedia's inventory of over 150 publications on the appropriate Topix.net news pages. In addition, on each of the Topix.net local pages, Topix.net has a section dedicated to local resources where consumers can find movie times, tv listings, restaurants, etc. Access to this content is through unrelated content providers.

How has "topical search" methodologies changed the way general consumers search for and receive their news?

Topical search has changed the way news is presented in several ways. Traditionally, newsreaders were "pushed" news - editors at a newspaper determined what was newsworthy and then passed it along to its readers. A reader in Dallas, TX who might have an interest in a Chicago sports team would have the opportunity to read about that team only if the Dallas paper included the story.

News search alleviated this by allowing users to "pull" news. A user could proactively search for that Chicago team of interest and then read through the stories. The problem is that the search results are a mix of relevant and non-relevant results, which users must sort through. Topix.net combines both of these methodologies through its topical news pages. In a sense, these pages are pre-packaged news-search results, with stories on the page "pushed" to the users but the non-relevant "search results" sifted by the Topix.net technology. This allows users to get quickly and easily get complete coverage on the news that matters to them.

What is Featured Placement?

Topix.net has formed business relationships with a number of approved publications, to offer prominent placement on the Topix.net channels that are specifically related to their content. Featured Placement does not affect the algorithmic editing of news channels on the Topix.net site.

Rather, Featured Placement guarantees that should NewsRank select a story from an approved publication for that particular Topix.net news channel, such story appears at the top of that page. If your publication is interested in Featured Placement, please email us at sales@topix.net.

Who is providing Topix.net's underlying technology?

Topix.net engineers have developed the patent pending technology that powers the Topix.net web site.

What are the main features with Topix.net?

Topix.net's proprietary artificial intelligence creates and edits each micro-news page with no human intervention. Each individual article is scanned for geographical references, such as streets, parks, rivers, stadiums and arenas, hospitals, schools, etc. From these references, the technology assigns to each story the appropriate set of latitude/longitude coordinates. The AI engine then further matches the text of the story against our knowledge base of over 10,000,000 patterns, classifying references to well-known people, business entities, sports teams, medicines and health conditions, etc. Substantially similar stories are grouped together, both to measure the prominence of a story and to ensure that users will not see repeated articles. The result is a story classified both geographically as well as by topic. On our local city pages, the news is sorted based on distance from the town page. On other pages, news is displayed chronologically by subject, with cross-reference links to other pages if a story lands in more than one topic. This deep classification of news allows users to drill-down for news related to their topics of interest.

Can news be personalized? Can I get email alerts or construct a "My Topix" page?

These features are currently under development and will be released shortly.

What specific R&D; efforts have been undertaken to ensure the future competitiveness of Topix.net's technology?

Topix.net engineers are constantly developing new features. Upcoming features include email alerts, personalization features and a turnkey ad building system.

How many news sources does Topix.net scan to find news?

Topix.net scans over 10,000 news sources, 24 hours a day

Is Topix.net's technology applicable to areas other than news?

Yes. While we picked news, one of the most difficult applications because of its dynamic nature, to showcase Topix.net's technology, the classification technology can be applied to a variety of text classification problems.