Local search tool Grayboxx has just informed me of its acquisition by BayAdvisor, Inc. The acquisition amount has not been disclosed, but Grayboxx CEO Bob Chandra will be acting as an adviser for BayAdvisor, specifically in the implementation of the Grayboxx technology.
It's actually Grayboxx's PreferenceScore technology that was of primary interest to BayAdvisor, and while the PreferenceScore has been used for local search so far, BayAdvisor plans on spreading its data aggregation capabilities to more types of search, such as people search or various search verticals.
In my previous coverage of Grayboxx, you may recall that the PreferenceScore technology takes non-identifiable data from transactions and other consumer and Internet behavior in order to extrapolate the data used for recommending top search results. Grayboxx has executed this on a local scale, having spent the last year rolling out its service across various cities in the US.
[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]As the Grayboxx team will not be joining BayAdvisor as part of the acquisition, it will be working alongside Chandra on his latest search project. Called Site605, the premise behind this upcoming search tool is to combine the human element of search result modification along with the algorithmic side to top search.