Search for Better Search: What We Mean by Semantic Search
The latest conversations around search innovation are focused on semantic search, our favorite topic! Mor Naaman, a research scientist with Yahoo Research Berkeley, has declared that “Semantic Web is deadâ€. ReadWrite/Web had consecutive posts on who does what in the space and posted questions on what semantic search is. Google’s Universal Search presentation has examples on how they will improve the algorithm by understand users’ intent- a “semantic†enrichment.
The more we talk to people in the tech space, the more we understood that the word “semantic search†means different things to different people. So, we decided to join the conversation to tell you what we mean with semantic search. Watch this space for our hakia Semantic Search 101 Blog Series where our technologists and academics will chime in to talk about: What is Semantic Search?;What is Ontological Semantics?; How Can You Test a Truly Semantic Search Engine?;What are the Challenges of Building a Semantic Search Engine?;and more.
Looking back, we have kept you abreast of our journey building hakia.com, a new, meaning-based search engine, for about a year. Since Day 1 of our introduction, we have received a lot of feedback from hakia.com users and Web searchers. Our recent “Search for Better Search†poll confirmed our starting hypothesis one more time: Web searchers want a search engine that understands text the way a human does. Users want to benefit from semantic applications in their search experience.
To recap it, hakia Beta search engine has been online for about a year. We have not used keyword search, rather we have employed sentence analysis powered by our semantic capabilities. Our philosophy has been to offer the Web searcher the best experience from one box, the search box, in quest for “Search for Better Search†by:
1) Mixing news with search results http://hakia.com/search.aspx?q=Christie%27s
2) Mixing weather with search results http://hakia.com/search.aspx?q=weather+Paris
3) Mixing famous quotes with search results http://hakia.com/search.aspx?q=democracy (see the bottom of the page)
4) Mixing meaning equivalences (multiple query results) in each search result http://hakia.com/search.aspx?q=did+Bush+kill+the+last+bill+in+the+senate (kill=veto)
5) Mixing categorical search results (equivalent to 10 simultaneous queries) http://hakia.com/search.aspx?q=piano
We take pride in the fact that we are the pioneers to introduce 1, 4 and 5. Recently, a number of new companies joined us in our quest to bring meaning to search. Some established search companies have announced their enrichments to the search experience. It looks like 2007 will be an interesting year in search space with lots of innovations in the pipeline. In the end, the Web searcher will have a big smile on her face and will enjoy a better experience with more relevant search results.
Meanwhile, please drop us discussion requests and questions and stay tuned to join our semantic search conversation.
Next: hakia Semantic Search 101: Definitions.
May 25th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Great article! (Thanks to Emre for pointing it out to me.) I think you guys are introducing some really cool, innovative features; in fact, I used Hakia as one of the examples of alternate search engines that already have Universal Search, in a post on the Read/WriteWeb. I used the search term “toyota” for my analysis, whose results fits very closely with #5 in your list above.
Regarding Semantic Search: do you treat semantic processing mainly as NLP of the input string or is there more to it than that? Since users have gotten trained to use keyword-ese in the past few years, we’re stuck with it for the forseeable future (like the QWERTY keyboard); and a few brief words can only provide limited information. In the future, do you plan to include components of social input (such as Wisdom of Crowds) and/or personalization, for providing semantic context?
May 25th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Hi Nitin,
Yes, I saw the mention, many thanks!
Keep checking this corner, we will answer all your questions in upcoming posts.