Web Genome Project Launches Movement to Map the Internet

Christchurch, NZ March 11, 2009. The Web Genome Project (WGP), designed to revolutionize the way we understand and interact with the Internet, launched today with an interactive search engine at www.webgenomeproject.org.

The WGP allows individuals a totally private way to find personally relevant content on the Web.

Each page on the Web has a distinct personality and flavor -- as does each person who surfs the Web. The WGP dynamically and continuously calculates a numerical profile -- a 'genome' -- for web pages, based on the aggregate genomes of their visitors.

Visitors to webgenomeproject.org can use the tool to compare search results to a 'filter genome'. They can adjust the filter to see how different genomes affect the order of search results, and they can also create their own genomes.

The Web Genome Project has been well received in the search industry. Charles Knight, Editor of the popular blog AltSearchEngines, said, "I downloaded the extension and gave it a spin... the WGP was spot on -- and then some!" Mark Cramer, the CEO of SurfCanyon, shared Knight's sentiments, saying, "I like it... I can see this becoming viral."

As genomes get generated for more and more pages, they create a virtual topography of the Web. Individuals can use this topography to find sites that share their genomes.

Anyone can contribute to this virtual topography by installing the WGP extension, completing a short survey to create an initial genome, and then using the Web the way they normally do.

Individual genomes are based on a predictive algorithm from VortexDNA. They're not personally identifying in any way, are not unique to the user, and don't contain any demographic or historical information.

"There are more than 108 million websites on the World Wide Web," says Branton Kenton-Dau, VortexDNA's CEO. "The WGP is an attempt to make sense of it all, so everyone can enjoy the Internet more without being followed around online or having their clickstreams tracked."

The WGP's stated goal is to generate genomes for ten million web pages. So far more than half a million pages have associated genomes.