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But more importantly Google doesn't know what kind of content something is. Or what questions the content answers. I'm not sure I agree with this. Google may

But more importantly Google doesn't know what kind of content something is. Or what questions the content answers. I'm not sure I agree with this. Google may not know it explicitly but it can effectively know it, perhaps in some cases even better than the average human would if given the same search keys. It is the difference between knowing what a word means by the way people actually use it versus by looking it up in the dictionary. Google essentially crowdsources its results, taking advantage of the fact that people entering similar queries probably have similar intentions. If your users are only using keywords, with little regard for word order, I don't see how you can do better than Google on average. You may do better for obscure queries where the best search result can not be easily inferred from the keywords present, but how pages are like this? Furthermore, if there are a set of keywords where semantic analysis suggests page A is the best result but the page that most people actually click on is page B, which do you return first? What if your index doesn't even have B? This will be challenge you will face when trying to do better than Google on average. Nevertheless, I applaud your work and will definitely keep Samuru at the ready for the queries that Google struggles on.

drakaal 13y ago
Who said we don't use word order? Who said we don't use similar search to infer intent? We can't really use the click throughs until we have users. We need feed back to improve results. But this also powers the related search in our TLDR Products ( http://www.tldrstuff.com http://www.tldrstuff.com ) and those have to work with much more abstract queries, because they aren't user queries they are generated queries.
- hexagonc 13y ago
  I'm not saying that you don't use word order. I think you must to some extent if you are doing a comprehensive semantic analysis of the keywords and websites. I'm saying that your users may not use correct word order because they are lazy and because they are used to the behavior of search engines that don't require it but still give okay results. Perhaps you have solved this problem, but I just don't see how you can offer better results than Google on average (without having a similar sized index) when users are just throwing together a bunch of words related to what they are looking for. It seems to me that if we want to take advantage of systems like yours for search and if we want to get better results than Google, we need to change users' behavior; they need to learn to give more precise queries.
  - drakaal 13y ago
    I think technology should strive for Zero Learning Curve. If I type "Chicken Chord On Blue" it should figure out that I probably need to know that I spelled it wrong, what it is, and how to make it. A user shouldn't have to know the answer they are looking for in advance.

drakaal 13y ago

Who said we don't use word order? Who said we don't use similar search to infer intent? We can't really use the click throughs until we have users. We need feed back to improve results. But this also powers the related search in our TLDR Products ( http://www.tldrstuff.com http://www.tldrstuff.com ) and those have to work with much more abstract queries, because they aren't user queries they are generated queries.

hexagonc 13y ago
I'm not saying that you don't use word order. I think you must to some extent if you are doing a comprehensive semantic analysis of the keywords and websites. I'm saying that your users may not use correct word order because they are lazy and because they are used to the behavior of search engines that don't require it but still give okay results. Perhaps you have solved this problem, but I just don't see how you can offer better results than Google on average (without having a similar sized index) when users are just throwing together a bunch of words related to what they are looking for. It seems to me that if we want to take advantage of systems like yours for search and if we want to get better results than Google, we need to change users' behavior; they need to learn to give more precise queries.
- drakaal 13y ago
  I think technology should strive for Zero Learning Curve. If I type "Chicken Chord On Blue" it should figure out that I probably need to know that I spelled it wrong, what it is, and how to make it. A user shouldn't have to know the answer they are looking for in advance.