Hakia is a “semantic search engine.” Basically, this means that it tries to “understand” your search query in the same way a real human would and thereby return more relevant results. Think of all the times when you type something in google and the results you get back just are not what you are looking for. Semantic search tries to solve this problem (BTW, this is a vast oversimplification of semantic search).
Semantic search is in all likelihood the future of search and if anybody is going to compete with google it will be one of the companies pioneering semantic search. Of course, google has semantic search efforts of its own.
I believe semantic search will be absolutely critical to making the internet more useful for kids. Research has shown that one of the problems that the “google-generation” faces is difficulty in searching properly.
My hypothesis is that this is because a child’s brain is not developed in the same way an adult’s brain is and in particular children do not possess the vast network of interconnections that define the “context” in which a search takes place. We adults find the internet more useful because we can guess using certain “rules of thumb” (what psychologists call heuristics) to figure out the right words to type into google.
Currently, Hakia is not realizing the full power of semantic search (through no fault of their own, I might add). Instead they are offering up “vertical search” which basically narrows the search to one predefined category. Currently that category is healthcare, which the deriv team identified as a sigfnificant opportunity for a new search engine. It’s nice to see that Hakia is confirming our guess.
However, a much more revolutionary opportunitiy for vertical search and ultimately semantic search is the children’s market. An effective children’s semantic search engine could empower kids to discover the knowledge they are most curious about in an easy, quick, and hopefully, fun way.
One of the goals of the Deriv research project is to identify a way to facilitate knowledge discovery by children while simultaneaously protecting them from inappropriate or inaccurate content. Vertical search and eventually semantic search could take us a long way towards that goal.
