Read my clicks
If you typed the word 鈥渂ow鈥� into a search engine, the return results could be about archery equipment, the front of a ship, a show of respect, or tied ribbons. A company called Cognition, based out of Culver City, Calif., has developed Semantic Natural Language Processing to help computers understand the meaning and context of words.
Cognition鈥檚 technology, which relies on semantic clues developed over the past 23 years, accounts for ambiguous words, phrases, synonyms, acronyms, and other linguistic snares that would confuse even William Safire.
The system is the only online searcher 鈥渢hat can increase precision and recall at the same time,鈥� says Tad Benson, a vice president at Cognition. 鈥淭he precision, of course, is finding the exact thing you鈥檙e looking for. The recall is finding all of it. So, what happens is that on a statistic keyword-based search engine, like a Google or a Yahoo!, you鈥檒l sacrifice one for the other.鈥�
You can test Cognition鈥檚 claims yourself at . But Cognition isn鈥檛 looking to enter the search-engine business. For now, it鈥檚 licensing its software to other applications, such as LexisNexis鈥檚 concordance. But the company is eyeing other uses for its semantic skills, such as ad targeting.
