Barney Pell's Weblog

With emerging tools, people will no longer have to dumb down their queries with the pidgin language understood by first-generation search engines. They'll be able to ask questions in English and other languages--or pose no question at all and automatically receive results based on their earlier queries or the applications they're using.

Most of today's search engines require a shorthand language some describe as keywordese. "It's kind of like talking to a 2-year-old," says Barney Pell, CEO of Powerset, a startup applying natural language processing to search. Over the next decade, Pell says, search engines will become more sophisticated in their ability to "understand meaning."

Powerset, Hakia, and other companies are developing search engines that apply linguistics--the science of language--to interpret questions, analyze Web content, and, as necessary, refine results through interaction with users. Hakia CEO Riza Berkan envisions search engines becoming "knowledgeable creatures in the future if we teach them how to talk and how to understand."

Semantic search engines parse language much like an English student does, using dictionaries and thesauri to interpret the meaning of words and link them using common rules of syntax and sentence structure. The sentence "IBM bought Tivoli for $743 million in 1996" includes concepts such as buying, buyer, subject of buy, year of buy, and purchase price.

For now, the process is aided by human beings who apply language rules and define categories to narrow searches, though Hakia's search engine can use language cues to find rough meaning in concepts it doesn't yet understand. "If it was fully automated, we would claim we have invented a human being," Berkan says. Web search engines like Google and Yahoo employ linguists, too, though they're not as far along with semantic search as Hakia or Powerset. Google's search engine can spell check and returns synonyms and variations of words, but it doesn't always answer questions accurately.