Thursday, July 31, 2008

Semantic Search Post 4: Profile: Hakia

Hakia offers a different take on semantic search. They describe the key difference between their offering and that of Google or Yahoo by emphasizing quality over popularity of results. Whereas Google uses information popularity (links, etc.) as its surrogate indicator of content quality, Hakia uses a more expert driven approach to identifying the most relevant results. According to their site, quality is defined by Hakia in the following manner:

Quality result satisfies three criteria simultaneously: It (1) comes from credible sources (verticals) recommended by librarians, (2) is the most recent information available, and (3) is absolutely relevant to the query.

Hakia offers a static demo of the difference that quality makes. The example relates to “shifting lanes,” a nautical term that relates in this instance to changing the channels in which ships traverse bodies of water.

I did a few searches of my and found that, as expected, Hakia improves results for research searches. But for navigaitonals, not so much. I found the search results for navigational search on Google far superior. But again, that is as expected. If you want a specific page and are simply using a search engine to navigate there quickly, a regular search platform can be more effective.

Hakia offers site owners two ways to capitalize on semantic search – customized web services and an easy to grab search box.

Additionally, Hakia searches are offered on mobile platforms via Berggi Search, a global mobile search platform.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.

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