Search Evolution: New Ways to Get Better Results

If you're ready for a new take on Web searching, a bunch of beta services are set to offer novel ways to search and to organize your results. Imagine stacking those listings on virtual shelves for easy retrieval the next time you need them, or flipping between results via 3D tabs. And now you can even troll for information by speaking your search terms to your cell phone. The beta services that are offering these and other innovations promise to turn conventional Web search on its ear.

Searching for Meaning

Google's relevance rankings have served Web searchers well, but search is more than a numbers game. Technology developed by Hakia attempts to extract meaning from phrases on the Web and in search queries. The service suggests that you search in phrases or questions, and those phrases are highlighted in the results to make them easier to browse. Hakia's SemanticRank algorithm is designed to consider the credibility of sources and to enable the engine to learn how to make better choices in the future.

But there are times when entering any text is inconvenient. If you're on the road and need to search via your mobile phone, you can speak your searches using Vlingo (currently available only to Sprint customers). Most phone-based voice-recognition systems accommodate a limited vocabulary, but Vlingo claims that its Hierarchical Language Models allow you to say anything and be understood. The system attempts to predict what a user is likely to say next based on the context of the previous words. Vlingo's technology also adapts to understand new words, and to improve accuracy by learning individual speech patterns as one uses the system.