Geeknook Labs

Birch is a project into knowledge search engines. It functioned differently than the standard Google search by providing an API to sites directly that allowed them to expose structured data. By using this API, the engine can return the answer to what you’re looking for, rather than links to what might be the answer.

Some examples of what sites might expose through the API are structured profiles (allowing people to find the profiles of everyone who works at a certain company, regardless of site), status updates, science facts, equations, and so on.

The name Birch comes from the site’s unique monetization strategy: allow sites that use the API to pay whatever they want for it. A constant percentage goes towards Birch costs, while the rest goes to seed upcoming charities that are indirectly sponsored by the sites.