hakia, Search Engines, and Librarians

How Expert Searchers Are Building the Next Generation Web

Jan 10, 2009

hakia is working with librarians to help make its results even more credible in the attempt to win the race to ouster Google in the current search engine wars.

hakia is one of the first Semantic Web search engines. However, besides QDEX (Quality Detection and Extraction) technology, which indexes the Web using SemanticRank algorithm, a solution mix from the disciplines of ontological semantics, fuzzy logic, computational linguistics, and mathematics, hakia also relies on the subject knowledge expertise of professionals.

By combining technology and human expertise, it attempts to completely redefine the search process and experience.

Verification Searching

hakia offers its users a place to find what they call a verified, social, semantic search engine. What this means is that not only is there semantic search, but the search engines goes one step further and verifies the results as well.

This has been the case for those engaging in health searches using Hakia’s social semantic search engines. By using tools such as the Medical Library Association to make sure the results for searches are trustworthy, Hakia takes search a step beyond traditional search engines like Yahoo! that are more results-oriented, by sorting through popularity-based relevance. At the moment, hakia is continuing to solicit credible content in health, medicine, law, finance, and in other knowledge-intensive topics.

Accountability and Search Engines

One very important issue that has been systematically evaded by the current (conventional) search engines is accountability. There is some form of commercialism in disguise in search engines regardless of how neutral the ranking algorithm appears.

For example, the marking of “sponsored links” is only a disclaimer to distinguish how the advertising money is changing hands, and often does not mean that the rest of the search results are free of commercial bias. This is obviously a main area of caution that search professionals such as librarians are concerned about, particularly when they are advising on queries related to life-and-death questions.

Librarians and hakia

In taking librarians’ recommendations to identify sources that are free of commercial bias,search results at hakia offer a degree of peer-review and editorial control. In putting for the slogan “A popular Web source may not always be credible, and a credible Web source may not always be popular," Hakia attempts to ensure that the sites that might hold the most useful information get weighted properly in spite of popularity while offering a social aspect of their search engine for additional search options that incorporate a more social aspect.

Commercial-free Searching

In allowing librarians and information professionals to suggest URLs of credible sources on a variety of topics, which hakia can then verify using its QDEX system, the search engine company is asking for the expertise of a largely untapped resource that already participates in the online space.

In particular, hakia has a “Librarian's Corner,” where librarians and information professionals can submit resources that meet Hakia's criteria, including peer-reviewed information, free of commercial bias, currency of content, and source authenticity in terms of original material.

Search Engine Wars Continued

The web is currently engaged in a massive search engine war, in which search companies are all coming up with new methods of unseating Google.

While the likes of powerhouses such as Microsoft and Yahoo! are leading the way, other younger search engines such as hakia are deploying innovating means by opening up its technology to include search professionals in its attempt to become the next Google.

The copyright of the article hakia, Search Engines, and Librarians in Internet is owned by Allan Cho. Permission to republish hakia, Search Engines, and Librarians in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.