Searching something new? « David Coxon’s IT Weblog

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March 8, 2009 – David Coxon

Search is key to the popularity and success of the internet, this much is certain. Could you even imagine an internet without search? But as more and more content is added the task facing search engines become more and more difficult and they need to adapt.

On the surface search engines don’t look to have changed much over the years, inside they are rapidly evolving almost like a virus, tweaking it shape and structure rapidly to adapting to changing environment outside. Generally though they have been moving along the same old tracks, using vast databases to store details of information on the internet and complex maths to rank those results into some sort of order.

The idea of a semantic (meaningful) web and semantic searching has been around for a while. The exact definition of semantic of course changes from provider to provider, but its usually taken to mean getting clear, concise disambiguous information.

Most of the big providers have been chasing semantics like it was the holy grail. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have all been racing to get something out first.

Searching something new? « David Coxon’s IT Weblog

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