| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer software |
| Founded | Oakland, California, U.S. (April 4, 2006) |
| Founder(s) | Mark Cramer, Mike Wertheim |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Employees | 3 |
| Website | SurfCanyon.com |
| References: Data from CrunchBase | |
Surf Canyon is a small computer software company founded and located in San Francisco, California, as well as their eponymous browser extension and web site. Both their extension and search site use implicit relevance feedback in realtime, along with explicit opt-in long-term customization, to personalize searches, especially targeting those with specific objectives or where timeliness is a factor.[1]
In the case of the extension, those searches can be on Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Craigslist.[2] That application is available as a downloadable extension for Internet Explorer, and as an add-on for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari. As of January 2009[update], Mozilla Add-ons listed it as a "recommended" download.[3]
According to reviews in the Japanese edition of Lifehacker[4] and the Chinese site weborn.org,[5] the extension also provides relevance feedback in languages other than English, using diverse character sets. The company's blog also claims to support Russian.
In 2010, the Surf Canyon website won the About.com Reader's Choice Award for Best Search Engine with 48% of the vote, compared to Google's 34% second-place.[6] The company's technology and published research have been cited several times in academic works dealing with dynamic approaches to search.[7]