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That `search-and-find' mindset
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New web tools harness `machine learning' to refine Internet searches
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Entering a term in one of the web's many search engines and getting a few hundred thousand answers is not a new experience.
Wading through all this, to find what you are really looking for, has become the real challenge; which is why Internet's leading search engines are putting money and research into refining their tools so that users find what they want (and remain loyal).
The latest to announce a new search feature is Yahoo whose research labs have come up with something called Yahoo Mindset (http://mindset.research.yahoo.com). The new feature added to the existing Yahoo search engine is a slider control at the top of the page. The left end says, "shopping", and the right end is "researching".
Having entered your search term, you can then use the mouse to slide the button to the left, and get more commercial results. Sliding to the right gives you more analytical or informative results.
A simple test by entering a term like "3G mobile phones" shows that the feature really works. Sliding to the left brings up websites like eBay or commercial sites offering 3G phones. Slide to the extreme right and the search throws up a number of useful resources explaining what is 3G or giving the standards and specifications.
This is a great tool to separate the wheat from the chaff of the online search results. What is wheat and what is chaff is, of course, your personal preference. Yahoo calls it an `intent-driven' search and says it has applied `machine learning' to the problem of text classification. Machine learning is the science of making computers `think' like human beings by allowing them to learn from past experience. Yahoo is not the only one to beef-up its search engine. `Ask Jeeves', the search engine that pioneered questions in natural format, has reportedly launched a few refinements to its search engine, which can be found at www.ask.com.
The first is called `Zoom' which like a zoom lens, allows users to narrow down or widen their scope of questions. This is useful if certain keywords mean different things to different people.
When you key in the term `eagles', do you want information on the bird or the pop group with the same name?
The new feature will allow you to `zoom in' to one set of answers and not the other. However, Zoom is not yet highlighted on the Ask Jeeves website.
A recent survey by comScore networks shows, that the web's search leader remains Google, which attracts 36 per cent of all search queries followed by Yahoo (31 per cent), Microsoft and MSN (16 per cent), AOL/Time Warner (nine per cent), Ask Jeeves (six per cent) and others (two per cent).
Both Google and MSN, in recent months, have addressed another search challenge, the hard drives in users' own desktops. The Google and MSN desktop search features are currently freely-downloadable services.
In late May this year, Google also announced a personalised homepage feature users can combine Google's various search engines for news, web images, and the like with its e-mail service, G Mail, local weather, selected share market information, etc. Yahoo and Microsoft already offer such personalised web pages.
The game of catch-up between the leading Internet portals and search engines never ends — and we are not complaining — as long as the fruits of their competition remain free for us!
A. VISHNU
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