Back in July 2008 Microsoft purchased semantic search engine Powerset, and have announced they are now testing the integration of Powerset technology into Live Search results.
Semantic search differs from normal search in that the search engine tries to understand what a user is seeking through natural language, rather than just a string of search terms. It’s a niche that Ask Jeeves attempted to fill many years ago, but where their results showed little difference to normal results, Microsoft hope to provide a genuine semantic search offering.
Live and Powerset have initially collaborated on the three projects listed below, with search results being generated for a small, randomly generated group of users.
Expansion of Live Search Answers
Microsoft have utilised a shared open database called Freebase to generate a summary with links for various topical searches. The example used on the Powerset blog is for the Chrysler Building.
Improved Wikipedia Captions
As Live Search returns Wikipedia listings for many query results, Powerset has been used to improve the relevance of descriptive text beneath the search result in relation to the query. Powerset’s blog shows the Wikipedia description generated for a search on the natural query [what henry I is said to have died from].
Related Searches
Catching up with Ask and Google, Live Search is testing links to queries related to the user’s search.
These projects are still in a small test phase and should get rolled out to all users when the test phase has been a success, with more Live/Powerset integrations promised to follow soon.