Frequently Asked Questions
Last Updated - February 1, 2024
Sooth is an award-winning, ad-free internet search engine specifically optimized for knowledge seekers. Sooth uses a proprietary search index comprised solely of thousands of the most reliable expert news, research, and informational sources across the web that cover a range of important global topics. Think of it as a subset of the internet that focuses exclusively on reliable, diverse, expert information and insights that knowledge seekers need to be more productive when conducting online research.
Sooth’s optimization delivers diverse search results rich in the highest quality information published on the internet. This delivers enormous productivity gains for our users; they get smarter, faster when using Sooth because there are no ads, no commercial content, no sponsored content, no dubious sources, no chatbots, and no distractions. In addition to curation, Sooth organizes results based on source type, further accelerating users’ research and knowledge discovery process.
Sooth is more than just search. Knowledge seekers need a platform that delivers the world’s best information and the tools and functionality to maximize productivity across the entire research and discovery process. To that end, Sooth is adding all the features that further accelerate our users’ productivity. To date, this includes a citation generator, bookmarking and research collections, collaboration tools, article summarizers, source transparency features (see further below regarding our partnerships with NewsGuard, AllSides, and Charity Navigator) and more. We’re constantly building and launching new tools and features to help make our users smarter, faster. Sign up and tell us what features you need.
Sooth is specifically designed for knowledge seekers and our market is students and educators.
We typically see the highest usage from 7th grade and above as students in this range generally tend to conduct more online research. But Sooth can be a useful resource for younger grades too depending on the research assignment.
An important point to keep in mind is that our curation happens at the “source level”, not individual pieces of content published by each source. While all of our sources are highly reliable, this does not mean 100% of the content published by all sources is appropriate for younger students. We do not conduct any filtering or vetting of content or search results beyond the initial source-level curation.
The internet is a powerful resource, but it’s also presenting us with a growing problem. When it’s so easy for anyone to create and share information, how can knowledge seekers, in particular, students and educators, efficiently identify the reliable, actionable information they need to get smarter and make informed decisions? Sooth is addressing this problem by building a curated research engine focused exclusively on the diverse, expert sources across the internet whose core product is information.
We focus on sources whose primary product is knowledge, data, news, research, or insights. We don’t include sources who are primarily focused on selling goods or services. A good example topic is anything related to “clean energy”. Using any other internet search engine to learn about clean energy, the top search results will be saturated with both ads and organic results from companies trying to sell energy-related products or services. This never happens on Sooth.
None. Sooth is a web-based application. Users only need to create individual user accounts (email and password) or use our Single Sign-On feature (Google, Microsoft, Clever, and ClassLink.)
As a web-based application, Sooth is optimized for laptops / desktops / tablets. While it is accessible via mobile devices, it is not an optimal user experience. We will be launching our mobile app mid-2024.
Databases are “closed” systems that incrementally add archived content of various provenance and vintage. Typically, the content is in the form of PDF’s and the search technology used is “keyword search.” While databases can be valuable archival resources, the diversity and scope of the content is usually limited to digital copies of printed newspapers, journals, and periodicals.
Sooth, by contrast, is live web semantic search that encompasses billions of pages of dynamic internet content that is instantly discoverable by our users once it has been published online by the source. There is a substantial difference – upwards of billions of pages of great content – between the volume of content that is available in databases and what is discoverable on Sooth. Recent open access initiatives within the academic and research communities is also pushing more research online today than in the past. Content that was once the exclusive domain of research databases is now being made available online.
Our product is built on trust and transparency, therefore user trust in our company is of fundamental importance to us. We will never sell to or share with any third party any personally identifiable user data. We do not track users once they leave the Sooth app. We anonymize all usage analytics, some of which we do monitor solely to improve the user experience. We are COPPA compliant and we do not collect any personal information beyond what is needed to operate our platform in a secure manner that delivers a high quality user experience. We do not collect personal information for any other commercial purpose. To learn more about our approach to customer privacy, please read our privacy policy here.
One of the first things you’ll notice about Sooth is the layout of our main search results page. We organize search results by the type of source that produced it. This layout accelerates the knowledge discovery process. It also allows us to use the full space of the page more effectively. This allows us to present dozens of quality results per page (depending on screen size) which means the user spends less time paging through results and more time-consuming information. Below are descriptions of each category. These can also be found on the search results page by clicking the information icon beside each category name.
Global News includes major U.S. and international print and online news and information outlets covering national and international news with a strong emphasis on daily original reporting. The majority of Sooth’s Global News sources have been rated by NewsGuard. Global News does not include any sources with a NewsGuard Trust Score below 60 (out of 100), per NewsGuard’s rating system.
Periodicals & Specialty News includes U.S. and international daily, weekly, and monthly print and online news and information outlets covering both broad news topics and industry-specific news with a strong emphasis on original reporting. The majority of Sooth’s Periodicals & Specialty News sources have been rated by NewsGuard. Periodicals & Specialty News does not include any sources with a NewsGuard Trust Score below 60 (out of 100), per NewsGuard’s rating system.
Think Tanks includes leading U.S. and international think tanks covering a broad range of topics. The majority of all Think Tank sources have been ranked by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the Lauder Institute, University of Pennsylvania. Think tanks, as defined by the Lauder Institute, are public policy research and engagement organizations that generate policy-oriented research, analysis, and advice on domestic and international issues that enable the public and policymakers to make informed decisions regarding public policy. Think tanks may be affiliated or independent institutions and are structured as permanent bodies.
Academia & Scholarly Resources includes leading U.S. and non-U.S. colleges and universities and their affiliated research centers and publications. Academia also includes dozens of online research and academic repositories.
U.S. Government includes U.S. federal government websites and official state sites.
Intergovernmental Organizations (IGO) includes organizations whose members are composed primarily of sovereign states.
Other Selected Sources includes a wide range of reliable sources that do not adequately fit into one of the other categories. This includes consulting firms, financial institutions, trade associations, and many other types of organizations.
We rely on a dynamic vetting and review process to determine whether a site is considered both a reliable source of information and is relevant for our platform. This includes subject matter expertise, commercial intentions, ownership, transparency, and reputation. We also rely on data from NewsGuard; we have a minimum Trust Score requirement of 60. Our selection process generally follows the following framework:
- We conduct ongoing bottoms-up and top-down analyses across each of our eight categories to identify both well-established, high quality sources and newly emerging ones. Our classification of sources into seven categories makes the identification and vetting process manageable.
- We focus on sources whose primary product is knowledge, data, news, research, or insights.
- We focus on sources that primarily focus on important topics that shape society.
- If a source has a NewsGuard rating, our Trust Score minimum cutoff is 60.
- For certain categories (e.g. US Government, IGOs), all sources fitting the description are included.
There is rarely, if ever, a clear demarcation what constitutes “expert” or “reliable.” Users should always apply their own judgment – our intention is not to disarm our users. What Sooth aims to provide is a valuable level of topical focus, source vetting, and transparency so that students can be much more efficient at accessing the vast amount of high quality information on the internet. The NewsGuard Nutrition Labels can be very helpful in this regard.
By way of analogy, customers do not expect knock-offs or poor quality products when shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue or Whole Foods. Instead, the customer expects a critical level of vetting to have taken place prior to any item going on the shelves in those stores. This is similar to what Sooth is doing, but with information on the internet.
We are always open to suggestions and actively seek user feedback. If there are particular topics or industries for which the Sooth user experience is poor or underwhelming, please let us know immediately.
Research productivity, period. Educators and students face the daunting challenge of trying to leverage the power of the internet while maintaining healthy research habits and high academic and professional standards. Today, their tools are inadequate.
There have been several new internet search engines to launch in the past few years. We aren’t alone thinking that the internet has gotten too unwieldy for one search engine to control everyone’s destiny when exploring the web. But Sooth stands alone in its vertical approach to knowledge search. This does come with some drawbacks, however. There is quite a lot that users cannot do on Sooth. Sooth is not good for shopping, travel, entertainment, and many other activities best conducted on other search platforms. Said another way, Sooth is not designed for the “average” user. Sooth is being specifically optimized for knowledge seekers.
Our mission is to make knowledge seekers 10x more productive when using Sooth versus the next-best-alternative search tool.
Use Sooth like you would any other search engine. Search results can vary depending on the specific terms you use. For the most comprehensive research experience, try running a search more than once but use slightly varying language each time. For example “China’s army”, “PLA”, “China military” are generally the same concepts but may return different results.
It also might be helpful to change your Recency selection – i.e. the time period over which your search results were published. If you’re looking for results from, say, the last three years or so, try searching across Past Year, Past 2 Years, and Past 3 Years. You’ll be amazed at what you find.
Check out our demo video if you have specific questions about particular features. Or, if that’s insufficient, please email us or use the feedback form. We love hearing from our users and read everything we receive. If you’ll allow us, we’d love to speak directly with you.
Sooth will launch an increasing array of features and functionality to further accelerate user productivity. Sign up to stay connected as we launch each one – and provide us your feedback which future features you’d value most.
We do not use ChatGPT nor deploy any chatbot features. Recent advancements in natural language generation have been remarkable, but we are not yet comfortable deploying a chat feature that can accurately and exclusively retrieve content from our extensive curated index of reliable sources. We are also mindful of our community and will always consider their needs as well. We will continue to evaluate opportunities and will share with our community when a different decision is contemplated.
We recently deployed our first use of generative AI to solely perform summarizations. We have two separate features: article summarizations (represented by the Sigma icon within each search result), and a custom summarizer (which can be found on the horizontal toolbar.) In both cases, the summaries are generated using our own pre-trained language model that is specifically designed to generate a summary of text it is provided; we do not need to “prompt” the model. In the case of the article summarizer, we first retrieve the full article text for you. If we cannot perform this first step of retrieving the full article text, an error message will be given. This happens occasionally, particularly if the article is behind a paywall (which we will not retrieve.) After we retrieve the full article text, we input the text into our model to generate the summary as output. In the case of custom summaries, the text is provided by the user.
We do not use or store any data, personal or otherwise, to train our model. We do not export any data, personal or otherwise, to any third party when generating your summary. Relying on our own summarization pipeline significantly reduces risk of error while keeping your personal data safe. Generative AI is a new technology and can be prone to errors. Users should confirm the accuracy with the original work and edit as needed.
We continue to refine and improve these features to reduce latency and improve the user experience. If users have any concerns or questions, they should let us know by using the feedback button or emailing us directly at contact@sooth.fyi.
Yes, we will launch our annual subscriptions starting in June 2024. Our pricing will be fully transparent and available on our website in Q1 2024.
When we launch our annual subscriptions in June 2024, we will only be allowing students and educators on to our platform. All users must have a verifiable school or .edu email address. Unfortunately, current users who cannot replace their current email with a valid school or .edu email address will be migrated off our platform by year end 2024.
Definitely and we encourage it. To maximize your experience, please reach out to us and tell us about your needs. We may be able to build and test specific features and functionality for your class before rolling them out platform wide.
Sooth includes several thousand global sources in its curated search index. Each source can contain hundreds to tens of millions of pages covering an enormous range of topics. Therefore, the scope of topics searchable on Sooth is extremely broad. That said, there are some specific topics for which Sooth performs exceptionally well. These include: current events and trending topics; sustainability, energy and the environment; national security and defense; international relations and foreign affairs; government and politics; business, trade, and finance; digital disruption and technology; communities and society; healthcare; and education.
Our Academia category has recently been expanded to include online open-access research repositories that include hundreds of millions of open-access research papers. On Sooth, users can search for content exclusively within Semantic Scholar, Arxiv, PLOS (Public Library of Science), Springer Nature, and CORE research databases (see the “Try this!” feature.) These contain over 100 million open-access research papers.
We regularly add new sources to our index so this list of topics will continue to grow. We are also very interested in hearing from users which topics are particularly important to them and whether Sooth delivers the quality and diversity of results you expect.
We strongly encourage you to see for yourself. You’ll quickly realize that the answer is a firm “no” (unless you search for something well outside Sooth’s core competencies, like baking recipes, for example.) In fact, if you are a student or educator, you will immediately realize that internet search has been seriously underserving you for a long time.
No, Sooth only vets the source (i.e. parent domain) for inclusion into our curated search index. Once the domain has been included, then most, if not all, of the site’s contents are subject to appearing as a search result on Sooth. We regularly monitor the quality of our index to ensure our curated sources are not veering from our standards. If our users believe we have included sub-standard sources or are missing other high quality ones, please tell us immediately.
No. As of January 31, 2024, we no longer include any User Generated Content in our search results. Prior to this date, we experimented with including select UGC platforms on Sooth and the user feedback we received was mixed. Unfortunately, UGC does not get seriously vetted (either by Sooth or the host platforms) and is therefore generally inconsistent with Sooth’s core value proposition. While these platforms can offer intriguing insights and disseminate breaking news quickly, there are risks to presenting this information alongside highly vetted sources. We are building administrative controls that will allow account admins to reactivate UGC search results for their respective accounts. Until these controls are implemented, UGC search results will not be visible to users.
When the change occurred on January 31, 2024, it immediately affected all new users who created their accounts on or after this date. Existing users must log out and log back in for the change to take effect.
No. Society benefits most when all high quality information is given the proper platform. This includes accessibility to every side of every issue from a range of contributors. It would not be in Sooth’s interest to take sides on any issue or ideology.
NewsGuard is an independent third party that uses real journalists to provide reliability ratings to thousands of news and informational online websites that comprise approximately 95% of all online engagement in the markets NewsGuard covers. Each site that NewsGuard rates is given an overall Trust Score between 0 and 100 points based on nine credibility and transparency metrics. We encourage you to learn more about NewsGuard directly from their website.
Sooth displays the NewsGuard Trust Score beside the results for those sources that have been rated by NewsGuard. This provides our users rapid insight into the reliability of the content they are consuming. Further inspection into the nine metrics comprising the Trust Score is available by clicking the top portion of the result. If users want to go even deeper and read the full NewsGuard write-up (called a Nutrition Label), this can be done by clicking the link within the popup window. We strongly encourage our users to do this in order to understand the extraordinary level of diligence NewsGuard performs on each source.
We have partnered with NewsGuard because our missions have strong overlap. We leverage their expertise to help identify which online sources should be considered for inclusion in our search indexes, but these ratings are not our sole criteria. As a general rule, Sooth does not include any source with a NewsGuard Trust Score below 60.
AllSides is an independent third party that publishes its AllSides Media Bias Ratings™ for over 1,400 media sources. AllSides’ ratings “are based on scientific, multi-partisan analysis using patented media bias detection and display technology to drive what is arguably the most credible media bias ratings. The ratings reflect the average view of people across the political spectrum, not one individual or group.” We encourage you to learn more about AllSides and their ratings methodology directly from their website.
We have partnered with AllSides because our missions have strong overlap. We leverage their data to help elevate transparency and awareness to our users. We display the AllSides Media Bias RatingsTM, when available. The ratings, however, play no role in our determination whether a source is included in or excluded from our search index.
To paraphrase from the AllSides’ website, the majority of today’s online technologies are specifically designed to expose users only to news, information, and ideas that confirm their existing beliefs. This creates filter bubbles and can exacerbate political and social polarization. To fight this trend, we believe exposure to all sides of a topic is critical and it starts with awareness.
No. While Sooth is primarily focused on English-language content, we draw search results from a wide variety of international and U.S. sources. For example, approximately 50% of our Global News sources are non-U.S. For government sources, we currently only index U.S. federal and state government websites, in addition to hundreds of Intergovernmental Organizations (IGO’s). We will soon be adding non-U.S. government sources. European Union related websites can be found within the IGO category.
Stay tuned to find out. And we want your input! We have a great list of user requests and some ideas of our own, but we would love more input. Specifically, we’re interested in hearing about the pain points and bottlenecks in your knowledge discovery process. Share with us and we’ll put it on the list.
Sooth was founded by Jeff Walsh and is supported by a small, passionate, and mighty team.
We are always on the lookout for people who are passionate about what we are building. If you love our mission and want to be a part of the team, please email us. Given the nature of our product, we are particularly interested in hearing from SWE’s, MLE’s, news media experts and researchers, and product people who are 100% focused on building customer love.
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