There has been much ballyhoo in the blogosphere touting Google’s so-called foray into semantic search. The blog post announcing the new feature doesn’t even mention the word semantics, but it does say it looks at associations and concepts related to your query. I see no mention of tuples or anything of the sort and the suggested queries are the kind of thing that I would expect to come out of a background closer to document/query classification than semantic analysis.
Related search results for much ado about nothing
And the results are pretty meh. Except for taming of the shrew, those results are no-brainers. That’s query completion quality results. Of course you can’t judge the whole system by one isolated example.
When PC World and a host of other pop tech media zines started toasting the entrance of Google to the semantic arena, I was excited to see some cool stuff. Imagine my disappointment when I was not only underwhelmed by the quality of the results, but by the lack of novelty. How long has that feature been there? Seems like I’ve seen it for ages. Maybe it got a technological face-lift (I guess that would be a face-lift on the inside), but it looks about the same as I remember it. Plus, its placement at the bottom of results page relegates it to search engine hell.
In summary: boring. My complaints are first and foremost with those elements of the blagoblag who over-hyped this. Secondly, I am complaining to Google for not being better. I am feeling demanding today.
Daniel’s post on it is worth reading.
Thanks for the link! Since I seem to be on a Kosmix kick of late, check out the difference:
http://www.kosmix.com/topic/much_ado_about_nothing
Or the exploration options offered by Duck Duck Go:
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=much+ado+about+nothing
I second your complaint: I expect better from Google.
The Kosmix kick is understandable, they are far superior in suggesting related items. :) They have become my default firefox search engine, but my brain is still hardwired subconsciously to pull up google when I want to search for something.
I do like the exploratory aspect of Duck Duck Go, as well.
I’ve always thought that there’s a huge danger of getting over-hyped, it’s instructive for startups like my own.
On Google’s results I agree with you, they are truly disappointing.
Being over-hyped is especially dangerous when the results are crappy. I’m thinking of cuil.
Oh, I forgot about cuil, that was the definition of debacle. ;)