If you're like most searchers, you find yourself refining your searches until you find what you're looking for. But if Bruce Johnson from Semanti has his way, you'll start getting the results you want from your first search.
Johnson is the CEO of Semanti, a San Francisco-based semantic search company. Today, Semanti is officially launching their brand new Firefox add-on. The add-on uses an 8 million term ontology to aid searchers with their keywords and phrases.
Semanti can figure out that when you type in fuel economy, that other terms such as mpg are relevant to your search as well. No need to go back to your original search to add on that second term in the hopes of finding new results.
When installed, you can use Facebook Connect to sign in. Then, Semanti will provide query suggestions for Google, Yahoo, and Bing. When the results page comes up, you'll see the Semanti results above the search engine's organic results. You can collapse the results if you wish.
Semanti ultimately relies on social search, hence the Facebook Connect. Johnson says that the sites that your social network visits are more likely to be relevant to you than the ones generated by a generic algorithm. Additionally, Johnson believes the "wisdom of the crowds" can fuel better search.
In order for that to happen, your network will need to actively be using and bookmarking Semanti. Of course, that's the big challenge in search - getting people to form new habits with new search engines. Johnson says that's why Semanti was developed as an add-on. You don't have to use a new search engine. You just use your default engine and then use the Semanti to bookmark.
Because of the social aspect, it takes a while for Semanti to work. Johnson and team may need to rework this since most people want their search to work out of the box. But to get an idea of what Semanti is like in all its glory, check out this video:
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