A Question of Semantics

Posted by Lima Al-Azzeh Apr 2, 2009

I use Google nearly every day, from finding out which restaurants provide late-night delivery to performing more important research like tracking down necessary contact information. A few days ago I came across a new feature that Google has added to their repertoire: Semantic Search.

I’m sure most avid googlers know exactly what I mean (no pun intended), but for those of you who don’t google just about every question under the sun, Google has augmented their search feature by supplying a list of related keywords and subjects that the searcher may be looking for. These appear on the bottom of the results page, but recently, keyword suggestions also appear in a drop down menu as the searcher types in the term on the Google homepage. What’s the point? Well, it’s a question of semantics really.

According to the definition on Wikipedia.org this type of search seeks to “disambiguate queries and web text in order to generate more relevant results.” This means that if I type in “Brighton, MA,” for example, the algorithms should be able to identify the meaning or interpretation of what I am trying to search for, and offer me further keywords and terms that may guide me to better, more accurate results.

I decided to perform my own test to see how well this new type of search works. I chose to use the example “Brighton, MA” for a few reasons. “Brighton, MA” is ambiguous because it has multiple meanings: it’s a town in Massachusetts and it is also the name of an indie band—which is what I was searching for. It’s common for me to search for indie bands/artists to find out about show listings, tickets etc. so I wanted to stay true to my own particular search habits to better evaluate Google’s Semantic Search. I was curious to see if the semantic search could “disambiguate” my search term and determine that I was looking for results related to the indie band and not just the location.

At first I plugged in “Brighton”. The search results didn’t even yield anything to do with Massachusetts, let alone the band. When I specified the search to read “Brighton, MA” Google read the algorithm to mean anything from “brighton map” to “brighton massage therapy”. The term “brighton mass” showed up in relation to the town but that search result was sixth on the list. And the indie band? They weren’t on the list of search items at all.

Ian Paul’s conclusion over at PC World is that while “the same old Google [is] an excellent first stop for finding information … Google is flying the semantic search flag without really delivering a noticeably different experience.” Indeed, though Google isn’t the first search engine to launch innovations in Semantic Search (Microsoft is launching their own new semantic technology, possibly named “Kumo”, later this year), I had hoped that Google would be ahead of the game.

The great news is that search engine providers are recognizing the importance of intelligent search and are attempting to address these issues further. However, perhaps Google should have performed a semantic search on the term “innovation” before releasing a feature that really only yields the same results as before.