Accoona is a New Jersey based-internet company. Their main product is a search engine that claims to use artificial intelligence to better understand searches. On June 23, 2005, in the ABC Times Square studios, the AI Accoona Toolbar, driven by a Fritz 9 prototype, drew against the 33rd World Chess Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov. In addition to traditional searches, it allows business profile searches, and its signature "SuperTarget" feature. Their exclusive partnership with China Daily, a large Chinese internet portal, was seen as a highly strategic move.

The CEO of Accoona is Valentine J. Zammit, formerly of 24/7 Real Media and Doubleclick.

Features

Business profile searches

Accoona claims to have the largest proprietary online database of information on companies worldwide. Over 5 million of these companies are privately held companies in China.

SuperTarget

Accoona's SuperTarget feature allows a user to select one keyword, and sort search results such that the selected keyword is prioritized over the other search terms.

Partnerships

Accoona provides the search technology to the Chinese portals Sina.com and Sohu. They also formed a 20-year exclusive partnership with Chinadaily.com.cn. Through this partnership, with China Daily and its widespread Chinese affiliates, Accoona expects 10 million hits daily from the otherwise isolated Chinese user base.

Accoona signed a million dollar deal with FAST Search from Norway to help enhance their rankings.

Press

Accoona received a lot of attention after selecting former President Bill Clinton as a spokesperson on December 8, 2004.

Accoona also received significant coverage from the webmaster community after many forum sites were spammed with promotional Accoona entries.

Accoona was selected among the 50 Coolest Websites of year 2006 by Time Magazine http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1222614,00.html