Search and Crowdsourcing: Verbase via Hong Kong
December 6, 2013
Short honk: You may wonder what a crowd sourced search engine is. If you poke around the mainstream Web indexes like Google and Bing, there are some tantalizing clues. Blekko and DuckDuckGo have used the word “crowd sourced” to entice users. With a bit more digging you may come across a search engine from Verbase. The news release, issued in October 2013, explains the notion in this way:
Powered by human intelligence, Verbase delivers more direct results for text-based searches, and enables users to add comments and original content to search results. Verbase is currently receiving over 50,000 unique monthly visitors to its site.
Google is mostly algorithms, most of the time. Rumors of humans tinkering with the giant’s findability system drift around, but Google likes nests of numerical recipes. Humans are, well, human, slow, and often prone to playing volleyball and sleeping.
A Verbase results screen for the query “Fulcrum Technologies Ful/Text”.
The Verbase approach uses three methods:
- A search box that offers category filters. (These look like the Blekko “slash” functions.)
- What the company calls an “automatic user ranking algorithm” that considers “engagement.” (Perhaps this means clicking and the time spent in a results list?)
- A “micro content” function that allows a user to create content. (Does this echo Vivisimo’s approach on steroids?)
According to the news release:
Founded by serial entrepreneur Antoine Sorel Neron, Verbase is a semantic search engine powered by human intelligence that relieves user frustration associated with spam, advertising, and irrelevant search results.
Several observations:
First, Google’s utility is not what it used to be. Search is not about precision and recall. Search is the source of money that funds synthetic biology investments and systems that are tuned to deliver brand advertising. Verbase is one company willing to point out that Google generates results that are sometimes less than useful to online searchers.
Second, Verbase is, like many other Web search companies, hitting some hot buttons to generate interest; for example, crowd sourcing. This is a good idea if methods exist to cope with the issues associated with uncontrolled indexing and content.
Third, the location of the company appears to be Hong Kong. Is this one more example of the center of technology starting to tip somewhere other than longitude of Highway 101?
The system is worth a look. My test queries returned useful results. The graphic approach reminded me of Exalead’s Web search system from three or four years ago. I noted that the system handled an odd ball product name “Ful/Text” reasonably well. Some competitors’ systems insisted that I really wanted “full text.” Wrong.
Verbase brought a smile to my face by returning results that I judged “relevant.” Worth a test drive.
Stephen E Arnold, December 6, 2013
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