Search leaders debate semantics, by Tom Krazit, Webware (June 17)
"Panelists from the four major search engines--Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.com--joined Web search start-ups TrueKnowledge and Hakia at the W3C's Semantic Technology Conference to discuss the rise of semantic technology as the engine behind the still nascent Internet search industry. Semantic search, or the idea of divining a user's true intent from how they enter their queries and how Web data is structured, is an unfamiliar concept to the majority of Web surfers who tend to think Internet search is actually pretty good as it is."
Semantic technology for search is about:
+ structuring data - Andrew Tompkins, chief scientist at Yahoo Search - "Today on any major search engine, you'll see structured information about a restaurant," he said, basic things like phone numbers, address, or maybe a link to a map of its location. All of those things require agreement on standards to make it happen."
+ analyzing the meaning of plain text
+ answering questions - "The goal of all this work is to make search more intuitive, more like asking a friend or colleague a question, said Riza Berkan, CEO of semantic start-up Hakia. "We believe search is going to move to more conversational techniques," he said."
Posted by Gwen at June 18, 2009 12:06 PM