This link has been bookmarked by 97 people . It was first bookmarked on 29 May 2008, by Rudy Garns.
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Semantic search is an upcoming technology that has set the expectations way too high. We have all been misled into thinking that these technologies are here to dethrone Google by delivering better search results. Neither of those things are true. What is true, however is that semantic search is going to be big and it is going to help us answer questions that we simply cannot answer today - complex, inferencing queries asked over the entire web as if it was a database.
In order for these semantic search technologies to make a dent in the market, they need to clean up their messaging and most importantly, their user interface. Presenting a search box is both misleading and detrimental, as people associate it with the simplistic questions that Google solves without any problems. To really showcase semantic search, these companies need to come up with innovative UIs that will help users to understand the power that is being put at their fingers.
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02 Nov 08
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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.
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We all know that semantic technologies are powerful, but how and why?
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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.
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The situation is made more difficult by the fact that right now there is only a thin range of problems where semantic search can clearly do better. This range is complex queries involving inferencing and reasoning over a complex data set.
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Sadly, natural language processing gives little advantage when it comes to this category of problems.
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Before looking at the problems that are perfect for semantic search, lets look at the hardest problems. These are computationally challenging problems that really have nothing to do with understanding semantics.
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There are fundamental limits to what we can compute, and a class of problems that have an exponential number of possible solutions is not going to be magically solved because we represent data as RDF.
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The good news is that there is a set of problems that are great for semantic search. These are the problems we have been solving so wonderfully with relational database.
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At its most structured extreme we find Freebase - the semantic database of everything. Freebase is accessible via free text search, but more importantly via MQL (Metaweb Query Language).
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Companies like Hakia and Powerset are probably working the hardest. These companies are trying to simultaneously build Freebase-like structures on the fly and then do natural language queries on top of them. The difference is that Hakia is using (likely similar) technology to query over the entire web, while Powerset has (probably shrewdly) chosen to restrict the search to Wikipedia.
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Here is the problem - the natural language interface has nothing to do with the underlying data representation.
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Fundamentally, Hakia, Powerset, and Freebase are databases. Fundamentally, all of them have some kind of Natural Language Processing that translates the question into a canonical query over the database.
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Having a simplistic search interface hurts Powerset and Hakia, and to a lesser extent Freebase, which is not positioning itself as generic search.
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Instead, the expectation should really be to solve the problems that can not be solved by Google today.
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28 Oct 08
Stian DanenbargerIn order for these semantic search technologies to make a dent in the market, they need to clean up their messaging and most importantly, their user interface. Presenting a search box is both misleading and detrimental, as people associate it with the simplistic questions that Google solves without any problems. To really showcase semantic search, these companies need to come up with innovative UIs that will help users to understand the power that is being put at their fingers
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The good news is that there is a set of problems that are great for semantic search. These are the problems we have been solving so wonderfully with relational database.
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Powerset got it right by realizing that semantics needs to be surfaced in the UI
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Having a simplistic search interface hurts Powerset and Hakia, and to a lesser extent Freebase, which is not positioning itself as generic search.
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n order for these semantic search technologies to make a dent in the market, they need to clean up their messaging and most importantly, their user interface. Presenting a search box is both misleading and detrimental, as people associate it with the simplistic questions that Google solves without any problems. To really showcase semantic search, these companies need to come up with innovative UIs that will help users to understand the power that is being put at their fingers.
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30 Sep 08
Diego MorelliWhat 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 dominated by Google, to problems that are computationally impossible. The situation is made more difficult by the fact that right now there is only a thin range of problems where semantic search can clearly do better. This range is complex queries involving inferencing and reasoning over a complex data set... -
28 Sep 08
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27 Sep 08
Jack ParkThe 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.
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26 Sep 08
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Avi@ Search Tools ConsultingGoogle can give good results on natural language search; Hakia, Powerset and Freebase end up creating an internal structure for unstructured data, and then doing queries against that. But there are misleading UI issues.
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28 Jun 08
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25 Jun 08
chris JangelovFor 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 ...
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15 Jun 08
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05 Jun 08
Alexander VießFor 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 n
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03 Jun 08
Arek CzubikInteresting article on Semantic Search Engines.
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Semantic Search: The Myth and Reality
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Michael SpechtRWW has a post on the semantic search and the currently available engines
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02 Jun 08
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31 May 08
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The misconception has been perpetuated since early days of the Semantic Web that somehow, because we will annotate the web, we will be able to solve these super complex problems.
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This is simply not true.
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The good news is that there is a set of problems that are great for semantic search. These are the problems we have been solving so wonderfully with relational database. Way too often we forget that semantic technologies are here to help us represent relational data spread over the entire web
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he search box that everyone is familiar with via traditional web search engines needs to go. Having a simplistic search interface hurts Powerset and Hakia
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Why is it that new companies are expected to improve on the algorithm that has ruled the web for over a decade? Instead, the expectation should really be to solve the problems that can not be solved by Google today.
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Presenting a search box is both misleading and detrimental, as people associate it with the simplistic questions that Google solves without any problems. To really showcase semantic search, these companies need to come up with innovative UIs that will help users to understand the power that is being put at their fingers.
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oogle's relevance was significantly better than its predecessors without requiring any change in behavior - this is the critical point. PageRank produced a very noticeable leap in quality *with the exact same user model as its predecessors*
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most consumers (and business users) don’t care about the "how." They care about the "what" and the "why."
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Semantics represents the "how." The industry should, instead, focus on the "what" and the "why." Once there is a clear business case for the "what" and the "why," the market will determine the best "how"
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Semantics need to either have a clear value-add to existing business processes, must facilitate the creation (yes, creation) of new business processes that might not be possible or practical absent semantics, or must clearly constitute infrastructure that underlies enhanced or novel business applications.
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We'd be better off coming up with a different name for it than Semantic Search, since search tends to position it incorrectly to users who are accustomed to Google
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30 May 08
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Ratcatcher"Semantic search is an upcoming technology that has set the expectations way too high. We have all been misled into thinking that these technologies are here to dethrone Google by delivering better search results. Neither of those things are true"
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29 May 08
Rudy Garns"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?" (ReadWriteWeb)
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Ken FujiuchiA look at the spectrum of semantic technologies from Google, to SearchMonkey, to Powerset, and Freebase to understand what is going on.
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Juho MakkonenTästä artikkelista syntyi tärkeä oivallus: semanttiselle hakukone on vähän sama asia kuin että pystyisi tekemään SQL-kyselyjä webiin.
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