Friday, May 18, 2012

Google shakes up search with new Wikipedia-like feature


Just months after rolling out a controversial personalized search feature, Google is shaking up its search pages once again. This time, the search giant is carving out a chunk of the site for “Knowledge Graph,” a tool that offers an encyclopedia-like package in response to a user’s query.
The idea is to get users to spend more time on Google and also to make the search engine offer a more human-like understanding of questions and context. “This is a critical first step towards building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do,” Google said in a blog post announcing the new feature.

How It Works and When it will Appear

The most immediate thing Google searchers will notice is a big block on the right site of the page. For example, users who search for Frank Lloyd Wright will see the familiar list of ten blue webpage links but will also find biographical and contextual information:

Google’s Knowledge Graph also contains another key feature: it parses results to get at what users “really mean.” For instance, it might try to anticipate whether a user searching for “long island” means the boozy drink or the place in New York. Or whether a “Taj Mahal” query refers to the structure, the singer or a local Indian restaurant.
Google shared an example of how a search for “Andromeda” might turn out. In this screenshot, the right side of the Google search page asks users if they mean the galaxy, the TV show or the Swedish rock band:
Full piece at Gigaom

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