Semantic technologies may not be the answer to computationally complex searches but they do have value in helping us represent relational data spread over the web. As we evolve to Web 3.0 there are a number of players in this space including SearchMonkey (Yahoo), Freebase, Hakia and Powerset (Microsoft) who are all attempting a solution on how to make the search experience easy, fast and relevant. (Of course we cannot leave Google out of this discussion).

Powerset, recently purchased by Microsoft, is attempting to take search to the next level by adding “understanding of the intent and meaning behind the words” in searches and webpages. They have chosen Wikipedia as a destination to display their technology as it is a formidable site for millions of people searching for indepth information on a wide variety of subjects.

Touted as a “natural language” approach to search, Powerset co-founder Barney Pell along with search engineers and computational linguists, are determined to find a solution to the problem that a third of searches don’t get answered on the first search and click. There are a couple of reasons for this they explain:

* Differences in phrasing or context between a user’s search and what is available on web sites

* Lack of clarity in descriptions on webpages

Search engines typically match words on a search to words on a webpage. Understanding the intent behind the search will deliver better search results for the user. Powerset plans to focus on making the search experience more flexible and on developing tools to improve the results descriptions on web pages.

Powerset has also created an iPhone optimized version of its Wikipedia search browser where users can search by topic, phrase or question. A user is returned a list of Wikipedia sentences derived from Wikipedia articles. Once you click on the search result you want you are taken to a Powerset-enhanced Wikipedia article formated for the iPhone.

The search frontier just became more interesting. Can Microsoft rapidly accelerate building a semantic search technology that translates to the full-scale of the world wide web? And can it catch up to the search giant Google, who seems to have a head start with its 200 million queries a day and huge web index.

The race is on and anything is possible.