Image: Sybren A.
Stüvel
A Kiwi researcher's work on technology aimed to improve search
engines has drawn the attention of Microsoft and Google.
Dr. Daniel Crabtree has created an algorithm that would improve
the understanding of a desired search term in a search engine, such
as Google or Yahoo.
"Search engines still throw up mixed results with ambiguous
search terms. If you searched for 'jaguar' for instance, it could
refer to the animal, the car, even an Apple operating system or
'80s video game console.
"Search engines currently don't deal with that ambiguity because
they simply search for web pages that contain the words you've
entered."
Crabtree says the algorithms he developed group pages together
to separate different interpretations, and use statistic language
models to capture the intended meaning of the query.
"One aspect of the model for instance is that it recognizes word
order. If you typed in 'New Zealand air', for example, it would
cluster results around air quality rather than Air New Zealand
which is the search result you get from Google."
Crabtree says this has been a lengthy and difficult process. He
started researching this in 2005 and published papers on the topic
between 2005 and 2008.
"When you sit down and try to solve a difficult problem head-on
you often hit roadblocks and dead-ends, but eventually if you try
hard enough you come up with something really complicated that sort
of works."
His results have led to informal meetings with Google, Microsoft
and Yahoo, who were interested in his work and hiring him.
--Idealog--
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