Hakia.com - site of the month

October 7th 08, 19:36

Hakia is a new generation semantic search engine. Founded in 2004, it has actually been around for a while now, but is only just starting to find its feet as an established and credible search engine.

Hakia sorts results into tabs categorised by web results, credible sites, news and images – aside from the credible sites, not sounding much different from Google so far…

…Where Hakia does differ from Google is in the way it ranks its search results. Hakia bases its search results on three criteria simultaneously:

1. They come from credible websites recommended by librarians (cooler than it sounds!)
2. They represent the most recent information available
3. They remain absolutely relevant to the query

What makes Hakia special is that in using semantic technologies, it also returns results that are accurate in meaning or concept – matching your keywords to related keywords on web pages, as opposed to results that provide the best match to the term that was searched for.

Why have we chosen Hakia as our site of the month?

Where it already takes the lead on Google is with its ‘credible sites’ results sorting. Currently only covering the topics of health and education, Hakia distinguishes between normal web results and credible results from pre-determined credible sites. Useful, for example, if you want to quickly find details of the side effects of a medication, without having to filter through the many less credible sites and forums that will undoubtedly appear in search results.

What makes Hakia our site of the month is that it is embracing what is almost certainly the future of the web. The site is still undergoing significant development and so currently does not offer the same breadth and depth of results as established players such as Google. However, with substantial funding backing its development, Hakia gives us an insight into the ‘intelligent’ web of the future.

What is this web of the future?

It’s impossible to predict the future of the web, just as it is impossible to predict the future in general. However, we have a pretty good idea that the semantic web will play a huge part in taking the virtually endless mine of information that we have with today’s web and turning it into an amazing, user-friendly resource…

…Imagine searching for ‘places to eat in London’ and along with relevant restaurant results, also receiving results that include details of cab companies, hotels and events happening that month…

…or imagine searching for a ‘Vauxhall dealer in Hampshire’ and not only returning details of Vauxhall dealers in Hampshire, but also car reviews, examples of the price of parts and servicing and details of private Vauxhall car sales in Hampshire.

The semantic web provides far more opportunity than simply the search angle we’ve covered in this article – watch our blog for more on the semantic web coming soon.

In the meantime, enjoy trying out our site of the month – www.hakia.com. If you’d like to see how it currently compares to Google, you can use the Hakia Challenge to compare results side by side.