Affordable Proffesional Web Design
Powerset Semantic Search of Interest to Microsoft
There is an article on CNET that speculates that Microsoft may be interested in acquiring Powerset search engine, which is close to publicly rolling out its semantic search engine. The early reviews of the Powerset semantic search have been favorable.
Instead of basing its search results on keyword as Google does, Powerset uses word relationships, concepts and meanings plus other linguistic aids in order to deliver more meaningful results. For instance, if a user types in a phrase or question, they may be directed to part of page where the answer appears and not just the page itself.
During user testing of Powerset, the Powerlabs testers will be able to give search results a thumbs up or down, which will help the developers in refining their algorithms. Google has also experimented with this feature on a limited scale.
However, Powerset may change more than how a search engine delivers results. It may change user behavior in those searches. When Ask.com was AskJeeves.com users were encouraged to type in questions that affable butler would try to answer.
Resources for
