Will Semantic Search Work For Local Search?

Writing by Brick Marketing on Monday, 12 of May , 2008 at 10:15 am

There’s a new search engine in town that hopes to topple Google. It’s called Powerset. I’ve already read two reviews of Powerset, as well as tried it out for myself, and the two reviews could not have been different. Both were by bloggers that I respect and admire.

Greg Sterling of Screenwerk likes Powerset. Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim doesn’t. They both make good points.

Andy Beal is right when he says that Powerset simply appears to be another way to search Wikipedia. But I’d hope that Powerset has plans to take their search engine beyond Wikipedia. Just for the record, they do also pull information from Freebase, as pointed out by Greg Sterling. But the overriding question is, does it provide anything valuable?

I’ll have to agree with Greg Sterling and say that there is some value in it. I tested a query that would intentionally be ambiguous. “Poetry schools” can mean all sorts of things. Under traditional keyword-type queries, anything that mentions the word poetry or school, if the query is made without quotation marks, would be pulled into the SERP. If I’m looking for information specifically about poetic movements, which is what the terms Poetry Schools typically refers to, then the keyword-type query wouldn’t prove much helpful. I tested it in Google and I was right. I got a few results in the top 10 that were helpful, but most of them were not.

On the other hand, Powerset gave me exactly what I was looking for, mostly from Wikipedia and some from Freebase, but without the fluff that came in Google. So that’s one query in particular where Powerset was more useful. But what about local search?

Local searchers are going to be looking for information that is useful to them in their particular neck of the woods. For most people, especially rural searchers, Wikipedia isn’t going to be much help. A search for Texas brought up information organized into 4 tabs: Geographically (about the state of Texas), TV Series, Band, and Novel. In other words, somewhat helpful. But what about Sweetwater, Texas? 515 Wikipedia articles that mention Sweetwater, Texas, a community with less than 15,000 residents.

Among the type of entries found for Sweetwater, Texas are:

• Rattlesnake Roundup
• KTXS-TV
• Registered Historic Places
• Libby Thompson (a prostitute and madam of a famous brothel)
• Women Airforce Service Pilots
• Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
• Bat Masterson (his first gunfight took place in Sweetwater, Texas)
• Clyde L. Garrett
• Asa Earl Carter
• Willie Amos
• Active Worlds
• Pig Show

So does Powerset, or semantic search, have any local search applications? Possibly. I think so in limited terms, but it can’t go on forever relying on Wikipedia. If Powerset could tap into the search algorithms of the major search engines and aggregate them with its semantic search technology then that would prove a lot more useful. It would have to filter out the fluff that is found and simply include useful search results based on the semantic intentions of the searcher - if that is possible. But for now, let’s suffice it to say, it’s off to a not-half-bad start.

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Category: Google Local, Local Live Search, Local Search Engine Optimization, Yahoo Local

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