Google's Semantic Search Technology

Google Gives Search a Refresh - WSJ.com

Powering up the Search Engine

Google is adding semantic technology to its keyword search system.

Keyword Search

• Determines the importance of websites based on the words it contains, links to those sites and dozens of other measures.
• Also factors in the person searching, such as his location and the time of day.

Semantic Search

• Refers to the process of understanding the actual meaning of words.
• Can differentiate between words with more than one meaning, such as the car brand 'Jaguar' and the animal 'jaguar.'

Source: Google Gives Search a Refresh - WSJ.com

Google Preparing Semantic Search Results - YouTube

Source: Google Preparing Semantic Search Results - YouTube

When people search, they aim to answer a question. They just search in the truncated version of that question. Keyword research is largely data-driven around the popularity of the terms in their question. Keyword research in semantic search will have to focus on what that person actually means when searching for that keyword.
For example: Yoga. What could people mean they search “yoga?”

• What is yoga?
• The different types of yoga
• How to do different yoga positions
• The best fit of yoga pants
• Yoga exercise videos

The possibilities are endless. When you’re framing your content in a semantic search world, it has to be around answering the specific questions people have as it relates to that keyword. With every sentence you write, ask yourself: How does this answer the searcher’s question? You will have to focus on the natural language even if those users are still focusing on keywords.

Source: How Google's Semantic Search Will Change SEO

How Google's New Search Works - YouTube

Source: How Google's New Search Works - YouTube

Related

• Semantic search - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Google's Knowledge Graph
• The Big Google Change: 'Semantic Search' Technology | UK SEO | QueryClick 
• Google semantic search planned to improve results - SlashGear

Yahoo Search Improvements

clipped from tech.yahoo.com Yahoo Technology Will Offer Abstracts of Search Results (PC World) Yahoo's lab in India is developing technology that will summarize information about web search results rather than simply offer links as search engines currently do. clipped from bangalore.yahoo.com clipped from tech.yahoo.com The Bangalore lab is working in the area of automated information extraction, which involves going into the URLs, going through billions of pages, and extracting the relevant information, he said. If it is a product page, users will typically get abstracts that include an image of the product, the name of the manufacturer, and the price, Rastogi said. Likewise a link to a hotel would have its address, telephone number, maybe a map guiding users to the hotel, and the rating of the hotel, he added. Yahoo made available to developers earlier this year SearchMonkey, a platform that it said would allow developers and site owners to customize the presentation of URLs in search results.

clipped from developer.yahoo.com

SearchMonkey

SearchMonkey is Yahoo! Search's new open platform.

Using SearchMonkey, developers and site owners can use structured data to make Yahoo! Search results more useful and visually appealing, and drive more relevant traffic to their sites.

clipped from tech.yahoo.com

"Clearly we don't expect that everybody will adopt SearchMonkey, so this 'rich results' piece is our in-house effort to automate the information extraction for large classes of web sites," Rastogi said.

Search query refinement

The Bangalore lab is also working with other Yahoo labs in the area of search query refinement.

If a user types in "cars", he could be at various stages in the purchase cycle for a car, or is maybe looking for a car mechanic, or wants to rent a car, Rastogi said.

Related:
Yahoo Technology Will Offer Abstracts of Search Results (PC World) by PC World: Yahoo! Tech
Yahoo! Bangalore
SearchMonkey - YDN
Yahoo Search To Offer Abstracts of Search Results, Determine Intent - ReadWriteWeb
Yahoo Technology Will Offer Abstracts of Search Results - PC World

Freebase -- Open Shared Database of The World's Knowledge

Freebase, a product of semantic web company Metaweb, is an open database of information. Unlike Wikipedia, which is a free form resource, Freebase is structured database, with concepts and relationships interlinked into a giant network.

clipped from www.freebase.com clipped from www.freebase.com What is Freebase? Freebase is an open database of the world’s information. It is built by the community and for the community—free for anyone to query, contribute to, build applications on top of, or integrate into their websites. How's Freebase different from Wikipedia? From GoogleBase? Wikipedia and Freebase both appeal to people who love to use and organize information. The difference lies in the way they store information. Wikipedia arranges information in the form of articles. Freebase lists facts and statistics. Freebase’s list form is good not only for people who like to glance at facts, but also for people who want to use the data to build other web sites and software. Information in article form can’t be reused in the same way (though, obviously, articles are awesome for other purposes). clipped from www.freebase.com Phoenix Mars Mission Canon EOS 400D Indiana Jones

Related:
Freebase: an open, shared database of the world's knowledge
Help Center : Freebase - The World's Database
Freebase: Dispelling The Skepticism - ReadWriteWeb
freebase Company Profile
The Freebase Blog

Semantic Tagging with Faviki

Faviki is a new social bookmarking tool that offers semantic tagging capabilities. This means is that Faviki will suggest tags based upon structured information extracted from the Wikipedia database.

clipped from www.rotorblog.com Faviki Offers Social Bookmarking with Semantic Tagging clipped from www.faviki.com Welcome to Faviki! Faviki is a social bookmarking tool which allows you to tag webpages you want to remember with Wikipedia terms. This means that everybody uses the same names for tags from the world's largest collection of knowledge. Thanks to DBpedia, which extracts structured information from Wikipedia and represents it in a flexible data model, these tags are reference to objects which are categorized automatically, keeping your and your friend's bookmarks and interests well organized. clipped from faviki.wordpress.com We need a tag evolution Wikipedia & DBpedia For example, the web page about Semantic Web on Wikipedia looks like this, while on DBpedia it looks like this (there is also an alternative that is easier to read by humans). Characteristics of new tags Unique name Disambiguation Tag properties and its connections to other tags Classification of tags For example, if we look at DBpedia page for Keith Richards

Related:
Faviki Offers Social Bookmarking with Semantic Tagging
Everybody | Faviki - Social bookmarking tool using smart semantic Wikipedia (DBpedia) tags
We need a tag evolution « Faviki Blog
Semantic Tagging with Faviki - ReadWriteWeb

Yahoo! SearchMonkey

Yahoo has launched a private beta for its SearchMonkey developer platform. The idea is to create applications that users can install to modify how results display on the Yahoo search pages.

clipped from searchengineland.com Yahoo! Launches SearchMonkey Developer Tool in Limited Preview Yahoo! is providing a "limited preview" of a tool that enables developers to create SearchMonkey applications. clipped from www.ysearchblog.com Site owners can build enhanced search results that will provide searchers with a more useful experience by including links, images and name-value pairs in the search results for their pages (likely resulting in an increase in traffic quantity and quality) Developers can build SearchMonkey apps that enhance search results, access Yahoo! Search's user base and help shape the next generation of search Users can customize their search experience with apps built by or for their favorite sites clipped from searchengineland.com You can create two types of results with SearchMonkey: Enhanced result: may provide a more descriptive title, additional navigational links below the description, and other meta data. Infobar: retains the original title and description, but provides additional information below the result.

Related:
Yahoo! Launches SearchMonkey Developer Tool in Limited Preview
Yahoo! Search Blog: Start Monkeying Around
Yahoo! Search Blog: The Yahoo! Search Open Ecosystem
Yahoo! Search Blog: An Open Approach to Search
Yahoo! SearchMonkey: Oooh ooh oooh
Yahoo SearchMonkey Launches Into Private Beta
bit-tech.net | Yahoo SearchMonkey beta launched

Twine -- Organize, Share and Discover Information

Twine, a new social bookmarking service which builds a semantic web from all the items, people, collections, and tags that are contributed to it.

clipped from www.twine.com Introducing Twine. The Smartest Way To Organize, Share and Discover Information About Your Interests. Twine is a new service that helps you organize, share and discover information about your interests, with networks of like-minded people. You can use Twine alone, with friends, groups and communities, or even in your company. clipped from www.twine.com clipped from www.twine.com Auto-tagging Tags make finding and organizing information in Twine easier. Every item that is added to Twine is automatically tagged by identifying the people, places, organizations and general concepts that are related to that item. clipped from www.twine.com clipped from www.twine.com By connecting with other members of Twine you can share information with each other. Connecting with others lets Twine know what shared interests each user has so twine can offer better recommendations. clipped from www.twine.com clipped from www.twine.com Search One of the benefits of the semantic web is that items in twine can be searched, filtered and sorted in order to help you find the exact item you are looking for.