Is there Scope to Build a better search experience?

Sapna Satagopan | July 02, 2007, 10:35 PM

Hakia, a search engine that had started a buzz a year or so back, recently briefed me on their features and concept. Hakia is the ‘Semantic’ Search engine. I tested some keywords over the weekend, and quite liked the results for ‘iPhone’

I can see why Hakia’s biggest claim is that of relevance—contextual relevance is a strong attribute in how the results are organized. The ‘iPhone’ results are organized into news, profile, ratings and reviews, accessories, comparison and deals, pictures, blogs and quotes –about 13 categories totally. How many of those categories will I actually need? Perhaps not all. But in this case, I am looking for reviews and that’s pretty neatly categorized already. ‘Razr’ fails to retrieve equally organized results, however.

The ‘better’ search experience is a tough nut to crack—challenged by habituation and intent. Search engines continue to try, with ‘personalization’ thrown into the mix. My recent visit to the Google homepage [I use the toolbar about 80 percent of the time] showed personalized results for video and news, based on earlier queries. Sharing a computer at home does mess this up a bit, displaying golf videos that I would usually never look for. But the search experience is getting better in terms of relevance, across most search engines. I like Hakia’s thought behind the search experience, even if not consistent across the searches I conducted; admittedly they are still in Beta. I do agree, the ‘…’ on the Google search results can be slightly annoying, compared to fully displayed relevant text on the Hakia results. As Hakia progresses to a full-out launch, I will keep my eyes open to note their partnerships more than their destination site rollouts. There is always scope to cater to different perceived needs of searchers, but innovation will also lie equally in acquiring that traffic.

Speaking of relevancy, go here for a relevant Jupiter take on Search and Navigation.