Semantic Search Craziness Makes Search Increasingly Difficult

April 3, 2016

How is that for a statement? Search is getting hard. No, search is becoming impossible.

For evidence, I point to the Search Today and Beyond: Optimizing for the Semantic Web Wired Magazine article “Search Today and Beyond: Optimizing for the Semantic Web.”

Here’s a passage I noted:

Despite the billions and billions of searches, Google reports that 20 percent of all searches in 2012 were new. It seems quite staggering, but it’s a product of the semantic search rather than the simple keyword search.

Wow, unique queries. How annoying? Isn’t it better for people to just run queries which Google has seen and cached the results?

I have been poking around for information about a US government program called “DCGS.” Enter the query and what do you get? A number of results unrelated to the terms in my query; for example, US Army. Toss in quotes to “tell” Google to focus only on the string DCGS. Nah, does not do the job. Add the filetype:ppt operator and what do you get, documents in other formats too.

Semantic search is now a buzzword which is designed to obfuscate one important point: Methods for providing on point information are less important than assertions about what jargon can deliver.

For me, when I enter a query, I want the search system to deliver documents in which the key words appear. I want an option to see related documents. I do not want the search system doing the ad thing, the cheapest and most economical query, and I don’t want unexpected behaviors from a search and retrieval system.

Unfortunately lots of folks, including Wired Magazine, this that semantic search optimizes. Wonderful. With baloney like this I am not sure about the future of search; to wit:

…the future possibilities are endless for those who are studious enough to keep pace and agile enough to adjust.

Yeah, agile. What happened to the craziness that search is the new interface to Big Data? Right, agile.

Stephen E Arnold, April 3, 2016

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under News, Search, Semantic

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.