Dan Doman describes how this Internet technology company is striving to become a household name in the US and abroad. Michael Sharkey reports.

How many Swahili phrases do you know? Most likely one more than you think. If you’re among the millions of people who have seen Disney’s 1994 animated feature “The Lion King,” you undoubtedly know that “hakuna matata” means “no worries.” Funny what a kids’ movie can do for a foreign language.

It’s a phrase whose meaning has lodged itself into the collective conscious of a generation, and the folks at Internet technology company Accoona (the phonetic version of hakuna) wouldn’t have it any other way. The Jersey City, New Jersey-based company got its start in 2004 with a search engine designed to make its users happy by helping them find the information they’re looking for with ease.

Now, the company is striving to make Accoona a word people associate first with Internet technology, and then a cartoon. In a world where “Google it” has become the new “look it up,” the three-year-old company has a steep hill to climb. But with unique products and services under its wing, and eyes on the fastest growing online population in the world, chances are you’ll be hearing the Accoona name a lot more often in the not-too-distant future.

Dan Doman

Test drive
Log “hakuna matata” into the Accoona search engine, and you’ll get a taste of what makes it different. At the top of the results page is a news section featuring the most recent story that included the phrase (a story on the Lion King musical from Germany’s Mittelbayrische). Next is a business section featuring a D&B profile of a company bearing the Hakuna Matata name (a children’s clothing store located in Roma, Italy). Below that is the Web results section, featuring a list of 6,388,705 links to everything from Lion King sheet music to a resort in St. John.

While the news and business links are a nice touch, it’s the SuperTarget tool to the right of the results that catches your eye. Users can instantly narrow down their Web search by choosing from a list of drop down boxes: refine search, geo target, companies mentioned, people search, language, and publisher.

Let’s say you wanted your search to focus on the Disney use of the Swahili phrase. By clicking the Publisher drop down, and scrolling to Disney, your list of more than 6 million Web results instantly shrinks to 43. According to COO Dan Doman, it’s this fast and easy search refinement tool that makes Accoona unique.

“On most engines, you’ll get back 10,000 links in a few seconds, but will you ever look at 10,000?” Doman said. “We concentrate on providing the technology that allows the user to get at the preponderance of results they really want, fast.”

Not only are users able to easily refine their search using SuperTarget, Accoona was designed with complex artificial intelligence to help it better understand the meaning of query terms. In short, Accoona is smarter than your average search engine. Queries are instantly analyzed to ensure people get the results they’re looking for. “There are a number of different functions within the search experience we provide—news, business, etc.,” Doman said. “But the real key is in the way that the query is processed. The query analysis and the SuperTargeting are what make Accoona stand out.”

Don’t take Doman’s word for it. In 2006 Time listed Accoona among its 50 coolest Web sites, and more and more Web surfers all over the world are giving the search engine a try every day. In particular, the country with the fastest growing online population in the world, China, has taken a shine to Accoona. In 2005, 17 million Accoona searches originated in China. During the first nine months of 2006 alone, that number surged to 75 million.

Said Doman, “China is a huge challenge for us, but it’s also a big part of our success to date, and it will be critical to our success in the future.”

Not a field office
When Accoona first opened its Shanghai office in late 2006, a prospective employee of Accoona’s asked Doman a simple, but illuminating question: How many employees from the Jersey City headquarters made the journey to the Far East to run the China operation? Doman said his friend was stunned by the answer—zero.

“Our strategy in China is different because we are not taking the US product and transplanting it there,” he said. “In China, local content and local business practices are a requirement for success. That’s why we’ve made sure the people we have in place in China are the subject matter experts with the knowledge to deliver products tuned for this market. No one from our US operation transferred to China. Accoona China is not run as a field office. The operation we have there really is a Chinese company.”

As a result, the user interface of Accoona’s Chinese search engine is completely different, and the product is designed to deliver content, services, and data specific to Chinese business professionals and small and medium-sized enterprises. And Accoona is easy to find in China. Through an exclusive agreement with China Daily Information Company, the largest English language newspaper in the country, the Accoona Search Bar appears on the China Daily Web site, as well as other major Chinese sites such as Sohu and Sina. Zhou Jie, executive president of China Daily Information Company, even sits on the Accoona board of directors.

Doman said the partnership has enabled Accoona to develop further relationships with government agencies, committees, and organizations and vastly increase visibility. “The partnership with China Daily is critical to people doing business with us. It means we’re a name people can trust. It’s a legitimizing force.”

The company’s entrance into the Chinese market has been stunning. In less than three years, use of Accoona has climbed faster than a sherpa, and it’s now among the top 10 rated search engines in all of China.

According to Doman, that’s just the beginning. Accoona is currently developing its successful US e-commerce, advertising, lead generation, and comparison engine services for China’s growing online population.

“Last summer, I interviewed a marketing person in China,” related Doman. “She talked about all the things she’s doing to get people to use a particular online service, like games and offers. Finally, I asked, ‘What are you doing to get more customers?’ She said, ‘Nothing. We already have 300 million customers.’ There’s an order of magnitude difference when you talk about China.”

Sounds like “Accoona” may become a word people relate to Internet technology sooner rather than later.