March 28, 2009 by James Oliver
Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the race to perfect proper semantic searching spearheaded by, newcomer, Wolfram Alpha amongst others. Well, the competition has just become a lot fiercer with the announcement that Google will be joining the race. For the uninitiated, semantic search is the ability find websites based on the meaning behind the words you type, rather than simply the keywords within the search query.
Google’s entry into the semantic search race could be significant. Computer functions that mimic human thought patterns are the final frontier of computing. The fact that a company of Google’s stature has become involved gives the race a real shot in the arm and could lead to the significant advancement of the initiative.
However, for the time being it appears that the search engine leader has failed to land the ‘knock-out punch.’ Early testers have reported that the results from Google’s new semantic system are not all that different to the results from the traditional search engine. For now it seems Wolfram Alpha Remains at the head of the pack though they should be aware that if anyone has the ability to make this technology work, it’s Google. It’s just a question of how seriously they decide to take it.
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