Newer Search Engines Add Twists to Search - True but Hidden Knowledge
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True Knowledge, alas, is in private beta. It does feature a fascinating seven-minute video on its home page, however, that explains the technology. They say they’ve created a technology which translates natural language questions into a form that computers can understand. This addresses what they see as one of the fundamental problems of search: the fact that computers cannot understand the content of web pages.
As TechCrunch observed, this potentially puts True Knowledge in competition with Powerset. There’s an important difference though, which TechCrunch also points out: Powerset is indexing the web as well as trying to convert natural language queries into a form that databases can understand. True Knowledge is not indexing the web. Instead, it is collecting data from structured databases. It is also accepting data (and corrections to data) from users. The video at least implies that they have put some protocols in place to prevent the kind of vandalism that Wikipedia experiences from time to time.
Web surfers are an adaptable bunch, though. We’ve had to learn how to ask questions of search engines in a language that they understand. It may not be natural language, but it’s not that far off for experienced users. For example, one of the natural language questions that Google has problems with, according to the True Knowledge demo, is “is Jennifer Lopez single?” And it is true that, if you put the question in that form into Google’s search box, Google doesn’t really seem to know what to do with it.
But look what happens when you think about the question a little differently. I put “Jennifer Lopez spouse” into the search engine (without quotes) and here’s what came up:
Is this an instant answer? No. But clicking on the third link revealed that Lopez was married at least as of November 8, and clicking on the first link revealed that she’s been married three times. Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure that True Knowledge’s technology is a major improvement on what we have now, and may even be a godsend for some of us. I’ll probably use it myself once it goes public. But I do find myself wondering about the real size of the problem, and how well True Knowledge will solve it.
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