Semantic Search Allegedly Adds A Boost To Product Discovery
March 20, 2020
Semantic search is one of the old reliable pieces of jargon for improving a search application, but it appears to be old hat. Semantic search, however, can, when correctly implemented, add a much needed boost for product discovery.
Grid Dynamics explains semantic magic in the article, “Boosting Product Discovery With Semantic Search.” We all know that human language is a complicated beast, which is why it has taken decades to develop decent voce to text and automated foreign language translation algorithms.
Humans learn from infancy to process speech based on the context and life experience. As technology has progressed, search engines are expected to perform the same actions which is where semantic search enters the game. Semantic search not only matches key words and phrases, but it brings meaning to them. Ecommerce Web sites require more than keyword and phrase search. Customers want to sort products based on price, brands, ratings, etc.
I am a librarian, and I know that irrelevant results often appear in any search and there are two types of these results: Obviously irrelevant values and values with subtle differences. A simple solution does not exist to fix all the irrelevant results.
Solutions are usually built a hybrid of semantic search and unstructured data. For the semantic search part, they must have: single words must be part of unbreakable multi-word phrases, business domain knowledge retracts/enhances query options, ambiguous matching need to be fixed with saliency to match attributes. Boolean queries also can be implemented in new ways to alter searches. Semantic search can also be used with different physical properties and merchandising rules.
Semantic search is a powerful tool for ecommerce Web sites, but:
“However, the power of semantic search largely depends on the richness and quality of the domain data – product attribution as well as synonyms. If your customers often perform out-of-dictionary search, then semantic search quality will suffer. It can include
• searches by subjective features like occasion of clothing (church dress) or age group for hi-tech device (laptops for kids)
• searches for brands which aren’t carried by your site, but it has similar products which can be suggested instead of just dropping the brand value from a query”
Never doubt how semantic search can improve a ecommerce search engine, but be sure to instill proper parameters for it to work correctly. Semantic search will remain a favorite of marketing whether a system is helping the person looking for information or hindering relevancy.
Whitney Grace, March 20, 2020
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