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AOL has acquired Yedda, a semantic search Q&A service. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but Yedda will be a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL. It's R&D office will remain in Israel, though Yedda operates throughout the US and Europe.
Yedda works by matching questions to other related questions and topics, while finding available users that are most likely to be able to answer the questions. This semantic matching technology will continually seek out matches for both ends of the spectrum, while allowing users to establish themselves as authorities on given topics.
Yedda will be integrated into AOL's own Q&A services that are found in certain areas of AOL's larger network. This integration will be fully rolled out in coming months. Unlike AOL's other recent ad network acquisitions like Quigo, this one doesn't look to be a move to directly compete with Google, though this would be AOL's response to Yahoo Answers. With several partners, Yedda does extend its matching Q&A services to other web-based companies, and the majority of Yedda's success has come from its partnerships.