Taking on Google: Is Semantic Technology the Answer? 

A growing number of entrepreneurs and investors promise a next-generation Internet that is organized, simple to use and makes it easy for people to find things. The so-called semantic web will be based ... on search technology that will enable people to type in their questions using everyday language. Developers of next generation search engines say their technology will “understand” the language within those queries—much more precisely than Internet giant Google’s technology. The new search engines will then scour databases that have already “read” documents from across the web to find the best matches. Specific answers can be found for queries such as “Which is the best oil company in the world?” or differentiate between “movies by women,” and “movies about women.” That’s the goal of a handful of semantic search startups that hope to change the way people look for information online. But their greatest challenge will be taking on Google, which vaulted to the forefront of the Internet sea   [More...] [Less...]

hakia Search Engine Beta 

make hakia your homepage · about · blog · terms of service · contact BETA 16, September 2007. Copyright © 2007, hakia, Inc.

Interview: Mike Lynch, founder of Autonomy - Software - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com 

During the turn of the century technology boom years, Autonomy was something of a poster child for UK high-tech. A lot has changed since then in terms of the fluctuating health of the sector and the nature ... of the search industry - not least of all because of the rise of Google. But Autonomy founder Mike Lynch - who remains CEO at the company - is convinced Google will not repeat its consumer success in the enterprise market and believes the search industry is on the verge of great things. "Unstructured information" remains at the heart of Autonomy's approach. Lynch claims 80 per cent of information within the enterprise is unstructured and with the sheer volume of information ballooning, on the back of a move towards greater compliance and new data formats such as multimedia files, the need is greater than ever to be able to search this data quickly and effectively. Applications serving this growing market are what Lynch refers to as "second generation" search technologies. Google, he   [More...] [Less...]

Web 3.0 or 'Semantic Web' (Features by PC Magazine) [text/html, text/html]

Google Experimental Search 

Google is always experimenting with new features aimed at improving the search experience. This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When ... you search for the same keywords again, you'll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you've made. Note that this is an experimental feature and may be available for only a few weeks. This button (fig. 1b) will move the result to the top of the page and add this orange marker (fig. 1a) next to it so you can easily recognize it. The result(s) you promote will appear at the top whenever you search for the same keyword(s) in the future. At the bottom of the search results (fig. 1c) you can give the address of a page that's relevant to your search. When you search for these same keyword(s) the page you've suggested will appear at the top with this orange marker . Your changes will be applied each time you search for the same ke   [More...] [Less...]

Google's PageRank Update Goes After Paid Links? 

« AOL's Big Mobile Push | Main | Oct. 24, 2007 at 9:39am Eastern by Barry Schwartz Seems like there is a PageRank update taking place now that seems to be impacting sites that sell links. Can't say that ... we were not warned about this? Danny Sullivan wrote over two weeks ago, and now it appears many sites are getting hit with a drop in PageRank . Here is a list of some sites, including major publishers, who seem to have taken a hit overnight: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ PR7 to PR5 http://www.forbes.com/ PR7 to PR5 http://www.suntimes.com/ PR7 to PR5 http://www.sfgate.com/ PR7 to PR5 http://www.statcounter.com/ PR10 to PR6 http://www.masternewmedia.org/ PR7 to PR4 http://www.autoblog.com/ PR6 to PR4 http://www.engadget.com/ PR7 to PR5 http://www.problogger.net/ PR6 to PR4 http://www.copyblogger.com/ PR6 to PR4 http://www.joystiq.com/ PR6 to PR4 http://www.tuaw.com/ PR6 to PR4 PR7 to PR4 PR7 to PR4 http://www.johnchow.com/ PR6 to PR4 PR6 to PR3 PR6 to PR4 http://andybeard.eu/ PR5 to PR3   [More...] [Less...]

SEOmoz | Google Search Engine Ranking Factors 

This document represents the collective wisdom of 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization. Together, they have voted on the various factors that are estimated to comprise Google's ... ranking algorithm (the method by which the search engine orders results). The result is a resource of incredible value - although not every one of the estimated 200+ ranking elements are included, it is my opinion that 90-95% of the knowledge required about Google's algorithm is contained below. In addition to the ranking factors, at the very end of the document are the results of 4 questions I asked the panelists regarding search rankings at Google. Since I had the attention of such distinguished folks, I couldn't resist getting a few more valuable answers. NOTE: This is not a document that attempts to reverse-engineer Google's algorithm, nor does it attempt to inform web developers or marketers about how to optimize their sites. If you're seeking more information, I highly recommend ou   [More...] [Less...]

BBC NEWS | Technology | Yahoo chief opens the mobile web 

Yahoo chief Jerry Yang has revealed the firm's future ambitions for an open and mobile web. Central to the company's aims is allowing third party software developers to create small applications which ... can run in Yahoo portals. The first Yahoo platform to allow these widgets, as they are known, will be Go 3.0, developed for mobile phones. The search firm showed off applications that allow people to check MySpace, eBay and MTV on the go. "Bringing a rich web experience to mobile devices is not an easy task," said Mr Yang. "There are literally billions of mobile users, thousands of different devices and hundreds of different carriers. "The challenge is to create a simple starting point for all of them." Mobile browser Yahoo Go is a suite of downloadable tools that allow people to carry out every day internet tasks on a mobile phone. Software allows people to search the net, send emails, upload photos, download maps and receive news updates. In previous versions, users have been limited to   [More...] [Less...]

Singaporean agency offers $100K prize for multimedia search - Education - Macworld UK 

Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (ASTAR) is offering a $100,000 prize to the winner of a competition to develop new multimedia search technologies. The Star Challenge 2008 competition ... will last eight months and is open to competitors from around the world. Registration is underway and will close on 29 February, to be followed by three knockout rounds and a qualifying race for the finals, which will be held in Singapore. ASTAR hopes to spur development of new technologies for multimedia search, allowing users to search out specific words in audio or video files without the use of tags. Teams are expected to develop search algorithms able to seek out specific words, objects and events in video and audio files. Ahead of the knockout rounds, ASTAR will provide competitors with a set of development data and tools, including sample search queries and results. In the qualifying race to choose five teams that will compete in the finals, competitors will have to solve fou   [More...] [Less...]

Quaero 

The Quaero programme Quaero is a collaborative research and development program, centered at developing multimedia and multilingual indexing and management tools for professional and general public applications ... such as the automatic analysis, classification, extraction and exploitation of information. The research aims to facilitate the extraction of information in unlimited quantities of multimedia and multilingual documents, including written texts, speech and music audio files, and images and videos. Quaero was created to respond to new needs for the general public and professional use, and new challenges in multimedia content analysis resulting from the explosion of various information types and sources in digital form, available to everyone via personal computers, television and handheld terminals.   [More...] [Less...]