Archive for October, 2008

2008 is viewed as the first “Internet” presidential election. As the Washington Post aptly put it, the 2008 presidential race got the “whole world blogging.” Everyone was “Twittering” or blogging right after the debates this month. Media matched voters’ online activity with live streaming videos of Barack Obama and John McCain debates. YouTube has captured SNL’s Sarah Palin skits and her recent interview with Katie Couric. Lastly but not least, presidential candidates aggressively used the Internet for their campaigns.

We were curious to find out what Web searchers thought and asked one question: “Who is better for the future of the Internet, John McCain or Barack Obama?” Our on-going poll, which can be found at the homepage of hakia.com (please click “more” if you cannot see the poll), of over 2,700 respondents as of now is striking: 83% of Web searchers said that Barack Obama is better for the future of Internet- a win by a large margin.

This result may come to some as no surprise, as it has become widely known in the election that Obama’s campaign has mastered the art of new media in its efforts. Although this poll is by no means an indication of the outcome of this historic election, it does provide a flavor of the perception when it comes to gauging the level of “tech-savvy” the political candidates possess (or, at the very least, hakia users!).

For more information on the political candidates, try the hakia galleries for your one-stop search:

Barack Obama

John McCain

Joe Biden

Sarah Palin

We will keep the poll open until the Election Day. If you have not already voted, please tell us what you think!

We would like to tell you more about a new hakia feature – “my hakia.” Think of “my hakia” as your newspaper where you can be as specific as you like about what you would like to read!

The “My hakia” front-page personalization interface allows you to obtain search results from areas such as emerging news and dynamic content. Additionally, the service acts as a unique news monitoring dashboard that can be customized by queries. You can pose a question and track related news such as” Should microsoft acquire yahoo!? or “Why should I vote for McCain?”

Enhanced by many other options to monitor dynamic content, what we are offering is a glimpse of what the future of Web will be, where users pull highly customized content they need, rather than having something general – like an area of interest such as politics- pushed to them.

The custom search options available on “My hakia” include:

News search – Search results from emerging news articles for user specified queries
News headlines – Headlines for user specified region (US)
PubMed search – Emerging Pubmed articles per user specified queries
Wikipedia – Wikipedia articles per user specified queries
Other – Several other items ranging from weather forecasts to YouTube videos to cartoons exclusive to hakia

To create “Your hakia” front-page, please visit http://my.hakia.com.

One very important issue that has been systematically evaded by the current (conventional) search engines is “accountability.” For an introduction on the topic, you can read James Grimmelmann’s paper “The Google Dilemma.” If a search engine is bringing 10 results to a query, ranking these results based on some algorithm, should the search engine be somewhat accountable for what it presents? Obviously, “do no evil” type of tag-lines do not answer the question.

Today, there is certain level of commercialism in disguise in search engines. The marking of “Sponsored Links” is only a disclaimer to distinguish how the advertising money is changing hands. It does not mean that the rest of the search results are free of commercial bias. This is an important detail when searching in gray-shaded areas, like the treatment options for certain diseases. It obviously gets more important when the queries are life-and-death questions.

At hakia, we have deployed one solution for the accountability problem. The search results are separated by their credibility based on source Website’s level of peer-review and editorial control. We took librarians’ recommendations to identify sources that are free of commercial bias. This is an on-going process at hakia.

If a search engine cannot be held accountable for what it presents, it should at least be kind enough to separate visually what is credible and what is not. Expecting the end user to recognize credible Websites (and perform site searches) is as unrealistic as expecting everyone to be a physician.

Check the following query at hakia to visualize this concept:
shoulder injury

The user can jump to specific verticals by clicking on the “more” buttons. We have also deployed destinations such as:

health.hakia.com – for consumer health
pubmed.hakia.com – for medical science

where searches are confined to these collections of Web sources.

If a search engine’s algorithm is popularity ranking, then bringing relevant results from credible sources represents a problem, especially when vast portions of such domains are statistically infertile (like the holes in Swiss cheese). That is where semantic search technology makes a tremendous difference because of its systematic coverage without relying on statistical clues.

I am an advocate of information quality, as some of you may have read my earlier posts. I claim that exposure to more information can cause miseducation (if there is such a word). If we are the pioneers of Web search today, accountability is something we should all pay attention to. A world full of miseducated people would be a miserable place, and bad business in the long run.

Many of you may have noticed a significant difference when you visited hakia.com today. Through the launch of our new site, we are pleased to announce that we now offer a new, focused search experience.

For starters, we would like to share with you the philosophy behind this change. We have said this over and over again: we are dedicated to provide a quality search experience. To achieve this goal, our team aspires to establish a new standard of focus, clarity and credibility in Web search.

Web search beyond 10 blue links is the innovation aspiration of the search industry. On one hand, Google leads the way in popularity methods to better understand the user intent to take search beyond 10 blue links. This popularity driven or statistical approach doesn’t make the distinction of what is a credible (or quality) Web site or not. Furthermore, there is no focus on understanding Web page content with natural language analysis. Lastly, we do not observe categorization of search results based on the meaning of the query.

hakia wants to lead in a different way. We have introduced a transparent definition of “credible Web sites” and the first-ever search experience to find clearly marked search results from credible sites by librarians’ contributions. As Tim Berners-Lee recently stated at the launch of his Web Foundation, Web became a platform for misinformation and there is a growing need to label trusted sites. Since April, hakia has been the first search engine to implement this vision it jointly shares with Tim Berners-Lee. Furthermore, our QDEX system processes Web pages to anticipate meaningful questions and queries that can be asked to a Web page with semantic analysis. Lastly, hakia Galleries categorize search results based on the meaning of a query. Here is an example:

Now, we invite you to try hakia.com. For example, search for “shoulder injury”. Compare this search result with that of Google’s undifferentiated 1.4 million search results. You will notice:

– hakia introduces a new, focused search experience. For any given query, the first tab – “All Results” – provides a three-column overview of the Web results, including results from hakia Credible Sites, images and news, if available. The advertisements are clearly marked in the far right column. Searchers can now enjoy a clutter free, clearly marked and organized start to find more.

– hakia offers dedicated search results from Credible Sites – sites vetted by librarians and informational professionals. hakia is the first search engine to incorporate librarians’ collective knowledge of the Web to guide searchers to Credible Sites. Currently, hakia’s credible site coverage is in health, medical and environmental topics. We are expanding our coverage by engaging information professionals in credible site collection development at http://club.hakia.com/lib/

–In the navigation bar you will notice a link to “Galleries.” Now searchers can surf the highly-appraised hakia Galleries. hakia Galleries intuitively organize the search results into relevant categories, enabling users to scroll down to the category that is most relevant to their interests and begin their search there – as opposed to having to wade through pages and pages of unorganized “10 blue links” from other search engines. For example, a search for “Madonna” will categorize results in areas such as images, headlines, discography, blogs and fan sites, lyrics, myths and controversies and more.

This is how the screen looks:

We ask you to try the new hakia and tell us what you think! We will give you more insights about our new customization tool, “my hakia,” in a separate post. Stay tuned.

Next week, one of the top search industry trade shows – Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East - lands in our own back yard at the Javits Center in New York City. We are looking forward to seeing some familiar faces and meeting new people. Stop by our booth (#303) in the Exhibit Hall! Our Chief Architect, Kartal Guner, will also be giving a theater presentation showcasing hakia’s work in semantic search and advertising at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, October 7th.

We hope you have a chance to stop by our booth or check out Kartal’s presentation. We can promise a first-look at some exciting new changes at hakia, to be announced exclusively at the show on Monday. See you there!