Semantic Search: The Myth and Reality - ReadWriteWeb

Description

Semantic Search: The Myth and Reality

For a few years now people have been talking about semantic search. Any technology that stands a chance to dethrone Google is of great interest to all of us, particularly one that takes advantage of long-awaited and much-hyped semantic technologies. But no matter how much progress has been made, most of us are still underwhelmed by the results. In head-to-head comparisons with Google, the results have not come out much different. What are we doing wrong?

For example, when asked, What is the capital of France? both approaches come back with the correct answer - Paris . Also, a lot of queries that we are used to typing into Google in abbreviated form, come back with similar results if we type them using natural language. Clearly something is off. We all know that semantic technologies are powerful, but how and why? In this post we will show that the problem is that we are asking wrong questions.

The mistake is that semantic search engines present us with Google-like search box and allow us to enter free form queries. So we type the things that we are used to asking - primitive queries. It never occurs to us to type in What actor starred in both Pulp Fiction and Saturday Night Fever? or What two US Senators received donations from a foreign entity? We type simple questions, but this is not where the power of semantic search lies. Lets look at the spectrum of semantic technologies from Google, to SearchMonkey, to Powerset, and Freebase to understand what is going on.

What Problem Are We Trying to Solve?

The first confusion in the space comes from the fact that semantic search is being positioned as the answer to all possible problems - from modern search, currently ...

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