Mar
[Editor's Note: I received this email from Azhar Jassal at sehrch.com. I like what he's up to so I thought I'd give him a plug by republishing his letter, with Azhar's permission.]
Hi
I wanted to make you aware of a new search engine that I have spent the last 15 months building: sehrch.com
This is a new breed of search engine, it is a “structured search” engine. This type of search engine queries both the document web and the semantic web harmoniously. I have developed a simple query language that allows a user to intertwine between both of these worlds.
The purpose of Sehrch.com is to complete a users overall information retrieval task in as short time as possible by providing the most informative entity centric result. This is accomplished by either accepting an unstructured query (just how mainstream search engines are used) and applying conceptual awareness or by making structured queries, something all current mainstream search engines are incapable of doing (as they only concern themselves with the document web/ not the semantic web), which in my opinion adds a whole new dimension to information retrieval systems.
Some examples:
(unstructured) - Madonna : http://sehrch.com/s/Madonna
top result: Madonna (the entertainer)
note: just like a mainstream search engine
(semi structured) - Justin (age<25) : http://sehrch.com/s/Justin-(age%3C25)
top result: Justin Bieber
note: here we are searching for the unfielded token “Justin” with the fielded token “age” less than 25. Sehrch.com recognises age as a property due to the data and schemas its harvested from the Semantic Web. The combination of unfielded and fielded tokens makes this a semi structured query.
(structured) - (type:pop singers) (age<20) : http://sehrch.com/s/(type:pop-singers)-(age%3C20)
top result: Miley Cyrus
note: we have searched for entities that are pop singers and less than the age of 20. Sehrch.com gathers its entity awareness from the Semantic Web. The ranking of all entities is based on a popularity versus relevancy algorithm.
(structured) - (type:building) (floors>150) : http://sehrch.com/s/(type:building)-(floors%3E150)
top result: Burj Khalifa
note: search for buildings that have more than 150 floors. Again awareness is gathered from the Semantic Web.
There are more examples and on the about pages at: http://sehrch.com/about
If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask. Any mention you could make of Sehrch.com will be appreciated as I’m thirsty for feedback.
Some notes on my background in case you were interested: I am a computer scientist who focuses mostly on big data problems. I have spent all of my spare time (and money!) on sehrch.com for about 15 months now. My linkedin: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/azjassal
