People search for information in many ways and on a variety of topics. Some searches relate to highly commercial fields; others are more research oriented. For all searches Mirago aims to provide the most relevant information drawn from all available sources.
In the past, search engines have typically focused on one of the two groups. Some specialised in presenting information drawn exclusively from web pages; others solely offering results from a commercially driven advertiser base.
Whilst each has its advantages, neither is able to fully satisfy the broad spectrum of information for which people search. Few people searching for 'car insurance' are interested in someone's homepage which recounts a tale of buying insurance. Similarly students researching the molecular structure of a particular protein are also unlikely to be interested in the latest deals for buying medications.
A further complication arises when you consider that much of the information frequently sought is not held on web pages anyway. Very often large quantities of useful data are held in database systems. Typically these databases retrieve the relevant information in response to specific searches. This presents a problem for web search engines since they are unable to interrogate these databases in the normal way.
With all of this in mind, Mirago offers results drawn from a variety of sources. Mirago's technology falls into two primary categories. One deals with textual analysis and indexing. The other is focused on an auction style bidding model.
The following sections explain these technologies and provide an insight into the workings of Mirago:-
| 
