Whenever I am at a loss for what to post, I try to think about a digital area that I know I should understand better, but have avoided like a plague. For me, semantic search is one of those areas, so I have decided to do ten posts on it. They’re going to flow like this:
1. Intro to Semantic search
2. Company Profile: freebase
3. Company Profile: Powerset
4. Company Profile: Hakia
5. Company Profile: Trovix
6. Responses: Google
7. Responses: Yahoo
8. Conclusions
So let’s get started:
Introduction
Semantic search is a response to a variety of perceived shortcomings in the search space. The idea is that by augmenting search terms with desired meaning, the engine will have a greater likelihood of turning up the best possible results for a consumer.
Semantic search is most relevant to what the Wikipedia entry for it calls “research searches” versus “navigational searches.” In navigational search, the user is looking for a specific object, whereas in research search the user wants to know more about a topic. So for example, if I input “A09275 PDF” I am in all likelihood looking for a copy of the New York bill to regulate BT in that state. If on the other hand, I do a search fro BT privacy, I am likely looking for the best documents to provide insight on the topic. The second type of search is a research search.
Semantic search tools will be of little use in improving the results of navigational searches. When you want something specific, Yahoo and Google offer a fairly high likelihood of pinpointing it online. But for research searches, semantics may prove to help improve search results immeasurably.
The key concept to semantic search is “disambiguation.” By making the goal of a search less ambiguous, a semantic engine could help significantly.
Ambiguity comes in many forms. Consider the phrase “Red China.” While now out of vogue, the term was a popular one 25 or so years ago, and was used as a way of distinguishing Mao’s government in Beijing from Chiang Kai-shek’s in Taipei. But if you typed red china into a search engine you could get sent in a lot of ways:
Red mountains in China
Red dishes
The Communist Government of China
Chinese debt
Etc.
Semantic search helps improves the odds of finding the right document by creating lexical concepts (sorry…meaning “circles.”) and linking different meaning circles to one another based upon meaning similarities.
Such search relies on a relational database (think of a sort of 3-D database versus a flat or 20D database. The 3-D makes more linking and connections possible.
Semantic search also makes it possible to better provide related information. A search for a musician can be followed by a search for lyrics by the musician, etc. But from the marketer’s POV, it simply means more accurate search
More most marketing, semantic search should further improve the effectiveness of online marketing because consumers will be able to more easily find you online. While some have said that semantic search may weaken the graphical ad sector because the web will be less impulse driven through semantic search, I think just the opposite will be the case. The effectiveness of online advertising of all types should increase via this functionality, assuming you count view throughs.
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.
1. Intro to Semantic search
2. Company Profile: freebase
3. Company Profile: Powerset
4. Company Profile: Hakia
5. Company Profile: Trovix
6. Responses: Google
7. Responses: Yahoo
8. Conclusions
So let’s get started:
Introduction
Semantic search is a response to a variety of perceived shortcomings in the search space. The idea is that by augmenting search terms with desired meaning, the engine will have a greater likelihood of turning up the best possible results for a consumer.
Semantic search is most relevant to what the Wikipedia entry for it calls “research searches” versus “navigational searches.” In navigational search, the user is looking for a specific object, whereas in research search the user wants to know more about a topic. So for example, if I input “A09275 PDF” I am in all likelihood looking for a copy of the New York bill to regulate BT in that state. If on the other hand, I do a search fro BT privacy, I am likely looking for the best documents to provide insight on the topic. The second type of search is a research search.
Semantic search tools will be of little use in improving the results of navigational searches. When you want something specific, Yahoo and Google offer a fairly high likelihood of pinpointing it online. But for research searches, semantics may prove to help improve search results immeasurably.
The key concept to semantic search is “disambiguation.” By making the goal of a search less ambiguous, a semantic engine could help significantly.
Ambiguity comes in many forms. Consider the phrase “Red China.” While now out of vogue, the term was a popular one 25 or so years ago, and was used as a way of distinguishing Mao’s government in Beijing from Chiang Kai-shek’s in Taipei. But if you typed red china into a search engine you could get sent in a lot of ways:
Red mountains in China
Red dishes
The Communist Government of China
Chinese debt
Etc.
Semantic search helps improves the odds of finding the right document by creating lexical concepts (sorry…meaning “circles.”) and linking different meaning circles to one another based upon meaning similarities.
Such search relies on a relational database (think of a sort of 3-D database versus a flat or 20D database. The 3-D makes more linking and connections possible.
Semantic search also makes it possible to better provide related information. A search for a musician can be followed by a search for lyrics by the musician, etc. But from the marketer’s POV, it simply means more accurate search
More most marketing, semantic search should further improve the effectiveness of online marketing because consumers will be able to more easily find you online. While some have said that semantic search may weaken the graphical ad sector because the web will be less impulse driven through semantic search, I think just the opposite will be the case. The effectiveness of online advertising of all types should increase via this functionality, assuming you count view throughs.
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.
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