Web start-up
Powerset
has offered a glimpse into the future of search with tools that allow Wikipedia
users to employ "conversational phrasing" techniques instead of keywords.
The US-based company is the latest search specialist to showcase tools that
embrace the principle of semantic search, often espoused by web inventor Sir Tim
Berners-Lee.
A 'semantic' approach differs from the current generation of keyword services
used by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft by attempting to understand the actual
meaning of a query.
Instead of throwing up a batch of isolated links that require further
research, as often happens with keyword searches, Powerset claims to offer a
means of getting detailed answers more efficiently.
When surfers click on a search result they can summarise long pages of
content, helping them to pinpoint key information quickly, according to the
company.
"Unlike other search engines that index keywords, Powerset does a deep
linguistic analysis on every sentence it reads," said the company in a
statement.
"We extract and index facts about each sentence in each page, making our
index the first truly robust semantic index of the web."
Powerset is currently limited to Wikipedia, but the company intends to expand
the search technology to other products in the coming months.
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