The Rutgers-born search engine acquired by Ask Jeeves in 2001 was Teoma.
Teoma grew out of search research at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Professor Apostolos Gerasoulis and colleagues founded the company in April 2000, while Professor Tao Yang of the University of California, Santa Barbara, co-led technology research. Its work drew on the DiscoWeb project, which examined how links could improve search relevance.
Teoma officially launched in April 2001. Ask Jeeves acquired it on September 18, 2001, for more than $1.5 million, then integrated its technology into the Ask Jeeves service in January 2002. The acquisition mattered because Teoma’s ranking system helped Ask compete with larger general-purpose search engines.
A common mix-up is confusing Teoma with Ask Jeeves itself: Ask Jeeves was the buyer, while Teoma supplied search technology. Teoma was later rebranded and redirected to Ask.com in 2006; Ask eventually referred to its underlying approach as the ExpertRank algorithm.