“With more features in the Knowledge Graph and more languages, with conversational voice search and hot-wording coming to Chrome on desktops and laptops, and with new Now functionality like reminders….search is becoming a really beautiful and ubiquitous experience that intelligently answers your questions and assists you throughout the day across all screens.”

That’s how Google Fellow Amit Singhal summed up the evolving search experience at today’s Google I/O event. Here’s more about the latest features:

• Google’s Knowledge Graph, now some 570 million entities strong and growing, is taking it to the stats. Now, users will get important stats powered by the Knolwedge Graph, he said. “Already you can find answers to questions like what is the population of India,” he told the audience, “but starting today we will anticipate your next question,” which may be how that population compares to the population of other countries. So, you’ll get the answer alongside the trends line and see all that in comparison to the population of the two countries whose population is most often compared to India, China and the U.S. Google Knoweldge Graph is also boosting its language support, adding to the existing eight Polish, Turkish, simplified and traditional Chinese.
• Users in the Gmail search trial already have the capability of finding answers – like when is their upcoming flight or restaurant reservation — without having to sift through email, docs and calendar data. But, said Singhal, things can get better when it comes to letting users get those answers in the most natural way possible, which means Google has been working hard on technologies like voice recognition and natural language understanding. To that end, conversational search, already available on Android and iOS, is coming to all desktops and laptops through Chrome, he said.
• Joining conversation search is hot-wording, a new interface, or, as he calls it, a “no interface,” where users can ask their search questions without clicking on the mike. Just preface a voice question with, “OK Google,” and Google will speak back the answer to you, drawing among other sources on its Knowledge Graph for the response. Google product manager Johanna Wright gave a demo of the voice experience courtesy of Chrome on a mobile device, working her way through planning a day trip to Santa Cruz through to images of its beach boardwalk, asking “OK Google, how far from here to it?,” where Google, in speaking back the answer, recognized that it referred to the boardwalk and that here was her current location.
• Enter Google Now: Singhal talked up anticipation (it’s more fun if you pronounce it like Tim Curry in the Rocky Horror Picture Show number), and the usefulness of having the right answer suggested at the right time, even before a user asks. That’s what is set to happen with an on-the-way feature that lets users set reminders in Google Now to show up when they need them. Also launching on the Google Now front are other new cards: public transit commute time cards and more cards for music albums, tv shows, and video games. Google is now “even more useful as an assisted tool,” he said.

Of the new age of search, Singhal said it’s not around the corner, that it will be some time before this becomes the predominant search experience. “There are lots of complex and scientific problems to solve, but our investment and commitment to getting there sooner rather than later is immense.”

Photo courtesy: Flickr/rvaphotodude

Last month at its MarkLogic World 2013 conference, the enterprise NoSQL database platform provider talked semantics as it related to its MarkLogic Server technology that ingests, manages and searches structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data (see our story here). The vendor late last week was scheduled to provide an early access release of MarkLogic 7, formally due by year’s end, to some dozens of initial users.

“People see a convergence of search and semantics,” Stephen Buxton, Director, Product Management, recently told The Semantic Web Blog. To that end, a lot of the vendor’s customers have deployed MarkLogic technology as well as specialized triple stores, but what they really want, he says, is an integrated approach, “a single database that does both individually and both together,” he says. “We see the future of search as semantics and the future of semantics as search, and they are very much converging.” At its recent conference, Buxton says the company demonstrated a MarkLogic app it built to function like Google’s Knowledge Graph to provide an idea of the kinds of things the enterprise might do with both search and semantics together.

Following up on the comments made by MarkLogic CEO Gary Bloom at his keynote address at the conference, Buxton explained that, “the function in MarkLogic we are working on in engineering is a way to store and manage triples in the MarkLogic database natively, right alongside structured and unstructured information – a specialized triples index so queries are very fast, and so you can do SPARQL queries in MarkLogic. So, with MarkLogic 7 we will have a world-class triple store and world-beating information store – no one else does documents, values and triples in combination the way MarkLogic 7 will.”

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Frederic Lardinois of TechCrunch reports, “Bing‘s social sidebar, which shows relevant entries from your Facebook friends, Twitter, Klout, Quora and other services, just got a lot more interactive. You can now like Facebook posts in the social sidebar and add their own comments. In addition you can now also see all of the existing comments on a post right in the sidebar, too. This, Microsoft believes, will make the social search experience on Bing even more interactive, engaging and helpful than before. It also means users don’t have to leave Bing to engage with these posts. Chances are, after all, that they will get distracted by all of the other goodies Facebook has to offer once they leave Bing and won’t return anytime soon.” Read more

David Amerland of Imassera recently shared his opinion on why he thinks Google will win the semantic search race. He writes, “Google was a latecomer to search. When you’re the new kid on the block the paths that’ll lead you to the top of the hill are strictly limited: innovate or be the best. Innovation is the obvious one, of course, because it creates buzz, sets you out from the rest at first sight and draws the attention of the Press and those who can give you publicity. Being the best is harder. Read more

London, UK – May 8, 2013: Today, Ontology Systems, the semantic search company for structured enterprise application data, announce their nomination as finalist in the Big Data and Analytics category for the Pipeline COMENT Innovation Awards 2013.

The recognition comes as Ontology is being increasingly adopted by CSPs and enterprise across other industries, such as financial services, for its innovative uses of semantic search across large, complex data estates as a faster, more cost-effective, more resilient and more accurate alternative to traditional data integration approaches. Read more

Avishay Bassa of Newsgeek (translation by TheNextWeb) recently wrote, “Israeli start-up Symbolab, developer of a unique, mathematically geared search engine that can find and solve for complex mathematical equations, announced today the completion of a seed round of $1.2 million. The round was funded by several angels, including Michael Queen – former CEO of Harel Finance and Sprint Investment House, as well as other angels from the UK investment world. CEO, Michal Avny said, in an interview with Newsgeek, that the money raised in the current funding round will be used for further R&D of their technology, as well as to help finance the launch of a mobile application for smartphones and tablets in the near future.” Read more

CHICAGO, IL and STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN–(Marketwired – May 6, 2013) – EPiServer, a global software provider for innovative ecommerce and digital marketing solutions, today announced its acquisition of Swedish search provider, Euroling. Following the acquisition, EPiServer will continue to support the customers and partners of the wholly-owned subsidiary of Euroling. Because the two organizations have joint stakeholders, the acquisition allows for improvements to operational efficiencies and presents opportunities for consolidation. Read more

Panels are always among the most exciting and informative events at the Semantic Technology and Business Conference, and the panels at next month’s conference in San Francisco will be no exception. One of the most anticipated panels will happen at 3:45 on Tuesday, June 4, at 3:45. Search Engine Marketing in a Semantic World will examine a number of questions, including:

• Does the semantic web represent the beginning of the end of search engine optimization as we know it, or does the search engines’ adoption of semantic web technologies only add an additional dimension to search marketing without significantly impacting the fundamentals of SEO?
• Does the search engines’ drive to encourage structured data uses put sites not employing it at a disadvantage, and how far should the search engines go to ensure the search visibility of valuable sites not employing semantic web technologies? Read more

Mare Lucas of Wired.com reports, “Many postulate that the explosion in Big Data will usher in an insatiable demand for data scientists able to slice and dice data to guide more informed decision making within the organization. Others go a step further, bemoaning that a chronic data scientist shortage will hold back the full potential of Big Data. Concern is unsurprising. For years, the BI and data analytics conversation was framed around how to aggregate massive volumes of data and then unleash the data scientists to find the value. Today, despite the information deluge, enterprise decision makers are often unable to access the data in a useful way. The tools are designed for those who speak the language of algorithms and statistical analysis. It’s simply too hard for the everyday user to ‘ask’ the data any questions – from the routine to the insightful. The end result? The speed of big data moves at a slower pace … and the power is locked in the hands of the few.” Read more

SAN FRANCISCO, May 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Skimlinks, the leader in content monetization, today announced the launch of two new products aimed at helping publishers earn even more revenue from their content.

Skimlinks Showcases is a near-text unit that populates automatically with products mentioned in content. Leveraging Skimlink’s SkimWords technology to accurately identify product attributes, Showcases provide a visual way to complement publishers’ content with additional revenue-generating potential. Read more