Why Human Power Is the Future of Web Search

 I think you are perfectly right. I was reading an on-line article a few days ago about the Semantic search engine and was really impressed. Rather than using human intelligence, equipping search engines with semantic intelligence would by far improved the efficiency and capabilities of today's search engines.Though the ideal search engine may be beyond our reach,at least semantic search technology will bring us closer.Of course it has it own drawbacks in the fact that a searcher has to to search for information in a semantic way instead of using single or double key words but at least we can expect to get better search results than what we are getting now.

I agree that human knowledge and experience are two of the main contributors in a good database search.  Since there is immense amount of information available on the Internet which some of those are not reliable?

To judge if a web content is reliable able or not, it depends on many factors such as author's qualification, data currency, and the purpose of the content. A search engine is programmed to search for the key words that had been put in the page title and the content of the page. Hence, any good web developer is able to make a web site result in a top hit of the search engine despite its real content. On the other hand, the internet search guides that are manual are far more convenience to users who use a very human search content such as: “Where should I go to eat for the coming Christmas?” and it will help users to get to their information quicker since the information is already been categorized and reviewed by someone else. Having said that, human power is one of the most expensive resources; therefore, if everyone is moving to the subject directories search. We might see more advertisements on our search page or more and more database will be no longer free.

Generally speaking, the subject directories and the search indexes should be combined and balanced out in a way that less human will be required to intervene but certain pattern of good content can be learned or recognized by machines.   

the concept behind hakia.com is very interesting. Of-course the ability to find specific information depends on ability to ask specific questions

When I tried hakia, some results were very good but some were not that good

e.g

http://www.hakia.com/search.aspx?q=cheap+stores+in+Atlanta

 

But the company surely has some future. In my opinion, it is going to be acquired by a big gun in future ..............

-Raza 

Hey Steve,

OK, when it comes to scalability, Google is king! But there is way too much information on the Web for human-powered search engines to thrive for long. I believe semantic search technology is a more viable process that will have a greater influence on the next-generation Web.

Tomio Geron does an excellent job of describing how semantic search is already making an impact on the Web in his article, Taking on Google: Is Semantic Technology the Answer?

Geron describes it this way:

"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.”

If you want to experience a very good semantic search engine, take a look at Hakia.com. According to the article, it received positive reviews for its ability to quickly find very specific information.

james

Okay, for those of you who don't know what Cha-Cha is; it's a site designed for your grandmother. Because Grandma doesn’t get Google.

Cha-cha uses real people, who they pay minimum wage, to answer your queries over an AIM-style box. And guess what your guides usually use to search? Google.

The outcome? Your guide will find the same information that you could in a longer period of time and with fewer results.

So, yeah, this site is useful for the internet illiterate but that is a quickly shrinking group of people. Plus, the global trend is to create technology that allows customers to do it themselves; grocery store checkout, airline check-in etc. But we already have that access with Google. Why would we reverse the process?

You seem to suggest that we need this because content quality is degenerating on the net and additionally that this increased clutter causes “users to give up before locating the information they need” because much of the information, even when found, is misleading or just plain wrong. You’re right. The internet is full of lots of different types of crap .

This became pretty clear my freshmen year in college when I entered my symptoms into a WebMD-like site and was informed that I had Multiple Sclerosis. I didn’t. So, the truth is - I actually like your idea (organizedwisdom.com) as it seeks to use professionals to validate specific medical sites. That’s smart. And that could be useful in other areas too; online encyclopedias (as used by Wikipedia), How-To sites (like howthingswork.com), recipe sites, amongst many others. But it’s different than providing a guide – it’s providing a site that posts good sites.

Though, there may still be work to do. Because even with a network of human filters, there is no way to guarantee that this info is of quality. (As evidenced by some of the Wiki debate ).

Hello,Steven! Thank you for the interesting article.

Well, first  of all, speaking about search in general, people often accuse "bad searching engines", at that time, people  just don't formulate the key words properly. there's a  good web-site about searching engins that explains a lot

And of course, the competence of the information on the web-sites leaves much to be desired. But I am afraid that not everybody understands that.People get used to trust pseudoscintific information-there as a great discussion about it in public and academic discurses-so I think, people need to be  enlightened to use only reliable sources of information,from this it follows the next question: what are reliable sources:))?