Semantic Search News & Articles

German company, Ontoprise launches the latest version of its open source Semantic MediaWiki+ to help improve a company's knowledgebase and make finding information and retrieval easier.

Previously, we reported about Mediaspectrum’s (news, site) web-based content management platforms that have been widely used by the world’s newspaper publishers. This week, Mediaspectrum launched an update to ContentWatch, the editorial web platform for web and print publishers alike. ContentWatch 2.0 features new capabilities, including semantic search.

Another company with another SaaS product. This time it's Bellevue–based DataSphere, who is now offering their Web Suite on an "infinitely scalable" multi-tenant platform.

What should be of particular interest to companies finding it difficult to attract traffic to their website is that this solution contains elements that will land users right into their company’s lap – and website.

A Montreal-based software and research development company has developed a markup solution and language-neutral asset-descriptor that when fully developed, could result in a universal computer language for representing information in databases, web and document contents and business objects.

While still at a seminal stage of development, the company Gnoesis, aims to address the problem of data fragmentation caused by semantic differences between developers and users from different linguistic backgrounds.

CMSWire applauds those that take a current solution and put it on its head. Worio, a small search engine, isn't your traditional search engine, in that it all it does is find what you're looking for. While it can do that, Worio also aims to find the things you didn't even know you were looking for.

They call it a discovery-engine and it blends social media with algorithms that use user behavior as data points, rather than end points. For the past six months, they've been working hard to provide you with a broad range of discoveries related to the topics you search for daily on the Web. Today they announced that they have increased their discovery index from less than 10 million Web pages to "a critical mass" of 100 million since opening its public beta last July.

Move over scientists, we’re all feeling lucky these days. At least, we are when it comes to relevant search results thanks to companies like MetaDolce. To be more specific, OmniSearch is MetaDolce’s new and robust platform for semantic searching.

Last time we talked semantics the conversation featured Noesis, the semantic Web search engine developed specifically for scientific vernacular. This time around is considerably broader, as OmniSearch is designed especially for e-Commerce, social networking and informational websites.

Click over to your preferred search engine and type “global warming,” hit enter and wait for the faint tang of smoke curling up from your processor. What’s that? Six billion hits! Let’s get sophisticated and try “global warming” and “Al Gore”. Oh, wait. Google just sent you an email threatening legal action if  you keep instigating "insanely vague" searches.

If you’re a scientist, attempting environmental studies with a focus on atmospheric phenomena, and you type "red tide," it doesn’t really help to see links to redheads.com. In fact, it’s a distraction you don’t need.

This is when you may need Noesis, a new semantic web search engine developed at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a promising addition to scientific research.

Recently, we announced Quintura’s plans to launch their new site search tool in the US. Now, Quintura, provider of next-generation site search solutions for online content publishers, has announced the debut of several new features of Quintura Site. The updates are aimed at maximizing user experience and performance, as well as enhancing back-end analytics for publishing affiliates.

With so much talk about semantic search, another company emerges to show the rest of us, just how green semantic search can be.

Truevert, a project of OrcaTec LLC, based in Ojai, CA, has released what they call a “scalable, accurate, and powerful search technology” aimed at providing users with information that is focused on their interest.

Still in the beta testing phase, Truevert, as the name suggests, is a green search engine — a reference to its development. All searches are done from the point of view of environmental and social concern.

Back in February, we reported about Quintura Site Search, a “snazzy new search tool” in private beta. Well, private no more. Quintura, site search provider, has officially launched its new search tool in the US and has been awarded a patent for its “see and find” semantic search technology.

Semantic search, semantic Web… As of late, we’ve noticed the spiking interest in this branch of linguistics as it applies to the good ole Web.

What’s next — semantic blogging? Nah, not just yet. For now, the industry is moving to standardize some of the semantics and logistics of the OWL 2 Web Ontology Language.

California-based semantic search experts at Cognition Technologies know their semantic search business and according to them, search engines like Google, Cuil and Yahoo! Search Monkey are not the real deal, when it comes to true semantic searching. CMSWire had a chat with Cognition to get the scoop on what a real semantic search engine should do.

OutWit Technologies released a new Firefox 3.0 extension designed to outwit the web and perform smart web harvesting and semantic search. Based on a recognition technology, this tool is deemed to be the “first step towards a full-blown semantic browser.”

Based on an open API, OutWit Hub allows users to harvest data elements, documents or media from virtually any public source of content.

Expert System is an Italian company that is beginning to lay down a footprint in the ‘States. The company has released two semantic Web products in the U.S., COGITO Monitor and COGITO Focus, so we thought we’d spread the word.

COGITO Monitor is a semantic-based analyzer of consumer opinions and sentiment from online forums and blogs. It crawls the Web , measuring and graphing ‘customers’ feedback about your companies’ products and services – from millions of web pages and blogs’. And then reports back and tells you exactly what people are saying about your service. Semantic technology is pretty much essential for this kind of reporting, as it can get into the forum-esque nooks and crannies which Google-type crawlers cannot.

COGITO Focus meanwhile is a semantic indexing, search and analysis tool that manages strategic internal (intranet etc.) and external information.
‘More than 80% of the information useful for business is trapped in texts of various types (e.g. web sites, blogs, news feeds, emails, databases, etc.) ‘, and they’re spread throughout both internal and external repositories. Focus aims to grab all that material and get it to the decision makers in an effective, automated manner.

Gil Jenkins, who looks after Expert System’s PR, also pointed us to a cool content categorization utility that the company builds, but we’re not sure if it’s on the market just yet (in the U.S. at least). Content Categorizer automatically classifies documents and is provided with linguistic intelligence … take a closer look for yourself.

Visit the Expert System homepage for more.

Back in the mists of time, a couple of Stanford PhD students called Larry and Sergey came up with an idea to make searching on the web better. This they undoubtedly did. But skulking in the low-rent dens of Silicon Valley and elsewhere an army of wannabe moguls work tirelessly on usurping the Mountain View giant.

Whether for niche searches or for the whole web search prize, whether by human-powered or visual methods, whether by developing cunning semantic algorithms or by Social means, all these platforms have one thing in common: they all want to take a bite out of Google.com’s posterior.