Wolfram Alpha still struggles to find a winning niche

ComScore's assessment of unique users to wolframalpha.com over the past year shows that fewer people visited the site in April 2010 than did in May 2009.

Changes are coming that might boost Wolfram Alpha's profile among those without Ph.D.s. The company plans to make over its home page, and will start adding data for more pop-culture-friendly information such as sports, music, health information, and even its own take on local mapping.

"We're building something that understands the utterances that people put into it," said Stephen Wolfram, founder of Wolfram Alpha's parent company Wolfram Research, makers of the famed--and lucrative--Mathematica software. "We have to listen to all those users."

For more on this story, read Wolfram Alpha's niche continues to elude on CNET News.