Hakia's semantic search: Do we need it? By Stephen Baker I visited the Wall Street offices of Hakia.com last week. They're a start-up focusing on semantic search. For some questions, the results are impressive. I just asked Hakia for the three most common elements in the universe. The answer comes back with the results, with no need to open a Web page. A similar Google search gets me close, but needs a click. Hakia CEO Riza Berkan argues that Google is great for the most frequently asked queries, because the popular Web pages generate links and traffic, and fit into the search algorithm. But how about a page that is hardly ever viewed? He argues that semantic search (that "understands" the question) will service the long tail. My question is whether we've learned how to think like Google and the other leading engines. If we automatically choose words most likely to point to a specific page, or to provide a certain answer, we are providing crucial intelligence to the process. Perhaps, in that case, we can learn to live with a dumber search engine. Is this what's happening? Is Google poaching our brainpower? Posted at: http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/2007/09/hakias_semantic.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_blogspotting