Powerset’s New “Factz” From Wikipedia
Powerset, the natural language search engine that’s been under wraps for a while, has just launched a test version of their product that searches Wikipedia articles. Danny Sullivan describes how Powerset’s search differs from a standard search over at Search Engine Land.
Key to the difference is Powerset’s ability to glean meaning from the sentences. While other search engines primarily look for instances of words on pages, Powerset understands those words. Or something like that. The Search Engine Land article illustrates the concept with a search for Henry VIII. The Powerset results include “factz” based on verbs, such as he “granted” land and “married” a bunch of times.
I was suspicious of the “z”.
But, I figured I’d try it out myself using the tried and true ego search method. If I there’s one search result for which we should be able to judge accuracy, it should be the one about ourself. (Keeping in mind that the current version of my Wikipedia entry is woefully out of date and has been flagged for depressing grammar issues.) So what does Powerset think that Wikipedia has said about me?
That I have declared bankruptcy and received email.
Sigh.
If you makes you feel better, I “wished luck,” which reminded me of the old Brian Regan comedy bit: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=take luck
Thanks to factz, I learned something today. “puzzles involve yogurt”
hmm declared bankruptcy lets hope any employers are not using this to chek peopkle out
I tried a few searches myself and found its “understanding” of the content to be spotty at best. That said, it is refreshing to watch the evolution of search. Between players harnessing the social graph, human-powered search, and semantic / natural language initiatives, there’s a lot of interesting working being done.
[...] Vanessa Fox definitely isn’t [...]