WEBVTT - The Future of Search 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:02.960 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:08.880 It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:17.480 tex Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone, 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:20.119 and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:22.320 and I am an editor at how stuff works dot com. 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:25.000 Sitting across from me is a man who needs no introduction. 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:26.520 But I'm paid to do it, so I'll do it anyway. 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:31.280 Senior writer Jonathan Strickland, Hey there, right. You know I 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:34.040 should have put that in context. Yeah. Yeah, it turns 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:36.480 out that without context, it can be a really confusing 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:40.080 thing for me, also for computers. Because you know, today 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:42.159 we wanted to talk a little bit about the future 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:45.839 of search on the Internet. And the reason why we're 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:48.400 bringing this up is the week that we're recording this podcast. 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:52.520 The today's date as we record is May eighteen. Now, 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:55.000 this past week, there was some news that came out 0:00:55.880 --> 0:00:59.600 from Microsoft and from Google about some additions to their 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.280 their search products. So Bing and Google obviously those would 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:07.000 be the two UM and uh. And in both cases 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:11.479 there's some information about kind of a new approach to search, 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:13.520 and not not even that new, it's just that there's 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:17.560 sort of a new way of presenting the information. But 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:19.800 it's sort of a kind of a trend that we're 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:24.520 seeing building towards something we call semantic search, which is 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:28.480 sort of an intelligent search that's pulling information it's relevant 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:31.800 to your search query from multiple sources and putting it 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:34.399 together in a way that's understandable for you so that 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:36.840 you don't have to actually do all that work yourself. 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:38.959 Where you you know, when you typically do a search, 0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:41.080 you get all the different results, and then you have 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:44.000 to go and visit the different sites find out if 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:47.120 the information you need is there. Maybe it has of 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:49.040 the info you need, but not everything, So you have 0:01:49.040 --> 0:01:51.040 to go to another link and see if maybe that 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:54.440 has twenty of the fort that was missing. And so 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:56.920 you're piecing it all together bit by bit, and you're 0:01:56.920 --> 0:01:59.760 having to make incredible notes and if this is really data, 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:02.080 and and so you might even have an enormous spreadsheet 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:05.120 right and it just it's a lot of work. Well, 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:07.320 the idea behind semantic search is a lot of that 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:09.640 work gets done for you, and you look for something 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:12.640 very specific and you'll get very specific results back, even 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:15.960 if those results are pulled from multiple sources. So in 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:18.400 other words, you don't have to do all that work. 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:20.720 There's still a lot of work that has to be done, though, 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:22.560 So we're gonna cover all of that. And I think 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:25.080 the best way to start is when we talk about 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:29.720 how typically a a search is done in the traditional 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:31.600 it's kind of weird to say traditional when you're talking 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:35.200 about the Internet, but traditional Internet search style. Yeah, yeah, 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:38.240 well you think about it. There there have been search 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:44.560 engines out since probably around um, the early early nineties really, 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:47.560 and that that was when we have been talking about 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:54.160 the public using the Internet as tool for information, a 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:58.920 tool for communications and entertainment really um. And these the 0:02:58.960 --> 0:03:04.480 earliest search engine relied on some some pretty brute force technology, 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:08.440 one of which was was either a a a script 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:12.959 called a spider that would go crawling the web, you 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:14.919 get it. It would it would going here, yeah, it 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:18.000 would go link to link. It would actually follow links 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:21.639 and index pages. It would it would record the content 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:25.160 on pages. Now it did not understand that content, but 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:27.560 just merely said all right, these are the words that 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:31.799 appear on this particular web page, and so that gets indexed. 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:34.520 And then it would go to the next link and 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:37.800 it would index that one. And you know, there's what 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:42.520 I'm saying, one spider. Clearly, that are countless spiders crawling 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:45.640 the web, and there still are. Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:47.600 a lot of the search engines, the ones that that 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:50.200 we use today, still use that technology, but they're not 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:54.120 necessarily as reliant on that technology alone as they used 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:56.320 to be. There's more sophistication on the back end. Yeah. 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:58.840 And then you have Yahoo, which used a very uh 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:02.520 It's genesis used a very um, I don't know, would 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:06.160 you say, a intelligent way of going about indexing web content. 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:09.920 Out of all the web indexes in the world, Who's 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:14.680 was the most Yes, exactly. They had people. It's a 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:20.080 little star trek to reference, going going through and recording 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:24.440 what was on web pages. Um, which is again you 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:26.360 think about it, that's an excellent way to do it. 0:04:26.360 --> 0:04:30.960 It's also very time consuming and very expensive pay people 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:32.880 to do this, right, it turns out people will not 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:34.760 do this for free, all the kindness of their heart. 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:38.960 And with quadrillions of web pages out there these days. Yeah, 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:41.320 back in the early days of the web, even then, 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:44.919 indexing everything was a was a huge effort, all right, 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:46.880 it was. I mean it's not like it's not like 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:49.040 they were man, I remember back when there were only 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:51.599 three web pages, so easy. I was like, how do 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:53.279 I find one? Oh? Right, I need to go to 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:55.320 this one of the three. Now it was always a 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:58.640 little more complex than that. And so by the time 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:04.600 that you know the the we get to Yahoo coming around. Uh, 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:07.200 it's it's a big job going through and checking all 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:09.640 these pages. And of course it gets even more complex 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:13.479 today when we have dynamic web pages. Because back in 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:16.040 the old days, when you would create a web page, 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:19.000 it was a very static document. Yeah, it was written 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:23.240 in in hypertext markup language STML, and for the most 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:25.840 part there you know, there weren't scripts in there. There 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:30.200 weren't server generated pages like you'd find with something like PHP, 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:33.039 for example, and people just didn't make that many changes 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:36.280 like you might you might make a reference page for something, 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:39.200 so it's almost like an article in a magazine or 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:41.760 a page out of a book. It did not change 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:44.240 very much once you put it up there. Now, of 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:47.560 course you would always have the the the required under 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:51.280 a construction gift in the bottom to let people know that, hey, 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:53.040 there's still more stuff I'm going to add to this, 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:56.080 so you should come back again, yes, usually accompanied by 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:59.360 a MIDI file. Also, there was very I can't believe 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:01.680 we've never been this. When we talk about the stereotypical 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:03.760 stuff you would find on the old web pages, there'd 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:07.039 be a visitor counter. Oh I forgot about the little 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:09.920 It would look like an old analog digit counter, and 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:12.320 it would go up each type someone would visit it, 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:15.280 and there were people who were really proud of their 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.159 visitor numbers and other people who are very upset that 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:20.159 they would be like hovering around seven and you know 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:24.120 six of those are your mom? So, um, yeah, what 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:31.599 not the it's the universal mom. Sorry sorry but but yeah. So. 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:34.360 So the typical way is that these spiders crawl out 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:37.520 across the web. They index the pages. That index is 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:39.640 built into the search engine, so that when you type 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:43.359 in a query, the search engine compares your query against 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:46.039 the database and it starts to try and pull the 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:51.520 pages that appear to correspond with whatever your query is. Now, 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:54.240 in the early days, this was very primitive, where essentially 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:57.720 you were just getting pages ranked, sometimes just by the 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:00.600 number of times a certain term might have here on 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:03.279 the page. Oh yeah, they used to uh the early 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:07.760 days of search engine optimization UM, which is basically if 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:10.400 if you're unfamiliar with the term a way to get 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.600 more people to visit your website, so they would mention 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:17.760 certain words over and over again. So it's a law firm, 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:20.640 where where are lawyers and attorneys are? Blah blah blah. 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:23.120 And if you have a legal case that needs lawyers 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:25.640 and attorneys at this law firm, this law firm can 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:29.840 provide you lawyers and attorneys for your lawsuit, you know, etcetera, etcetera. 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:32.560 And then you would even find on some pages there 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:34.240 would be like at the very bottom of the page 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:37.200 all this tiny, tiny, tiny tiny tech sometimes in the 0:07:37.240 --> 0:07:39.280 same color as the background of the page, so you'd 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:41.480 have to highlight to see it, and all that would 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:44.800 be would be a list of unrelated terms. And it 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:47.600 was all about trying to game the system so that 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:51.360 the web search engine would point you at that page, 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:53.800 because the web search engine wasn't smart. It didn't know 0:07:53.880 --> 0:07:58.040 that that page wasn't really about kayaking, Right, you type 0:07:58.080 --> 0:07:59.800 in kayaking in this page pops up and you go 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:01.760 there and instead of it being a page about kayaking, 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:04.360 it's something else, like a car dealership, And you're like, 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:06.600 what the heck is this? Why is this on kayaking 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.280 right now. I guess I could fit a kayak on 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:11.400 some of these cars, but other than that, I don't 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:13.600 really get it. And it turns out they were trying 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.080 to just drive more traffic, which most of us. You know, 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:17.640 you sit there and you think about for two seconds, 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:20.080 you think that's a stupid way to drive traffic, because 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:22.040 if if you go to a page that does not 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:24.280 have the stuff you're looking for, you are not going 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:26.360 to stand that page for very long. But in the 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:29.520 early days of the web, people would do practically anything 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:31.600 to try and get you to their website and rename 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:34.480 photos so that they would work on search terms. The 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:38.480 kayak page, the kayak photo one. Also my favorite, which 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:41.200 is you go to bookmark a page and you realize 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:44.679 that the page was titled something about a paragraph long 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:48.240 with just search terms. Yeah, yeah, which just drove me crazy. 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:51.360 So at any rate, search engines have become much more 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:54.360 sophisticated since then, where they are able to weed out 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:57.240 a lot of that stuff. Google, for instance, it's very famous. 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:01.320 They have their algorithm and the Google algorithm page rank. Yeah, 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:03.520 the page rank is a lot different than just trying 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:05.240 to find a page that has a certain term A 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:08.199 certain number of times. In that case, page rank also 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:12.920 takes into account how many other sites link into that page. 0:09:13.400 --> 0:09:15.640 So if a lot of sites link into that page, 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:19.440 the Google algorithm draws the conclusion that that page must 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:22.160 be good because a lot of people are linking to it, 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:24.280 and if they, if there are a lot of links 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:28.080 that point to that page, then by Google's definition, that 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:30.720 one must be more relevant than one that has fewer 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:34.319 links into it. Now we all know that doesn't necessarily 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:38.440 correspond with reality, but in general it's a fairly safe approach. 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:42.040 And another thing it does is uh it recognized as 0:09:42.040 --> 0:09:43.959 attempts to try to game the system, like we were 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:47.240 just talking about. If you do the lawyers and attorneys 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:50.000 law firm thing that Jonathan was just talking about, it 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:54.440 will go wait a minute, you're obviously over linking. You know, 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:57.480 you're over quoting these terms, and I'm going to rank 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:05.720 you lower because you are obviously spamming essentially page ten 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:08.200 or eleven of the search results. And most people don't 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:11.440 go much further beyond the first page. Some people do 0:10:11.480 --> 0:10:13.840 the first two or three. I because I do research 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:16.679 for a living, I will often dig fairly deep down 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:19.000 to try and find especially if I find something that 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:23.760 looks really uh like a remarkable fact, I kind of 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:26.400 want to make sure I get some confirmation that this, 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:28.520 in fact is true, and I want to see if 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:30.800 I can find anything that does not reference the same 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:34.960 source material as whatever I found, because you know, you 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:37.240 want to you want confirmation, but you don't want to 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:40.800 just like look at eight articles that are all based 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:45.280 upon the same news press release, right, because then you're 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:48.000 just like, well, all this is regurgitation of the same facts. 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:50.880 I need something. I need an independent confirmation that this 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:54.600 is true. So yeah, there's you know, but for most people, 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:57.640 they don't tend to go beyond the first couple of pages. Um, 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:02.280 but this is all still ultimately kind of a dumb search. Yeah, 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:04.679 go ahead, I'm sorry. Well, I was just gonna say 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:08.560 that Larry Page and Sarah G. Brand when they launched 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:11.760 Google they revolutionized search because it made it so much 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:14.920 more effective than it had been in the past, and 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:16.680 it really weeded out a lot of the people who 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:21.440 couldn't do something as sophisticated, uh search the web as 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:24.600 sophisticated as you know, in such a sophisticated way as 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:27.520 Google was doing it. Now. Of course, Microsoft came out 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:30.920 with Bing, which uh, if you pull out your fanboy 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:32.920 is um, you know, and put it aside for a minute. 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:36.040 From whichever of the major tech companies you prefer. I 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:39.360 think Bing and Google both do an excellent job of 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:41.920 searching the web. They do. You'll come up with different 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:46.920 results when you go between the two, but they'll both Um, 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:49.040 they'll both come up with excellent results, which is why 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:53.120 I like some search engines like Dogpile, which aggregate search 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:57.679 results from these different search engines. Um. But but yeah, 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:00.800 I mean they these guys are obviously the heavy hitters 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:03.560 because they're very good at coming up with results that 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:07.120 people find effective. And that's why they're the big, the 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:09.720 big guys in the market, if you will. Now, but 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:13.040 they're not stopping and resting on their laurels either. Right, Well, 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:16.760 we've pretty much covered what the present day search uh 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:19.360 landscape is. Now let's talk a little bit about the future. 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:21.600 And some of this is rolling out presently. In fact, 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:23.480 by the time this podcast goes live, many of you 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:25.640 may have access to the tools we're gonna be talking 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:28.760 about because Google, for example, is rolling out what they 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:33.360 call the knowledge graph and being has this nose as 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:38.200 in k in Ows approach, where it has three different 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:42.679 columns called search knows, being knows, and friends know and 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:46.640 um uh. In both cases, they're trying to incorporate a 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:51.080 little bit of what we think of as a semantic search. Now. 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:55.000 Semantic search is where the search engine has at some 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:59.199 level a comprehension of what it is you're trying to find. 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:02.960 And that's really important because, as it turns out, people 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.520 like to name stuff similar things, even if those two 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:11.199 things are themselves not similar. I'll give you a very 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:15.040 easy example. Let's say you're doing a web search on 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:19.120 son s u N. Well, that could mean the Sun, 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:21.480 as in the star that's at the center of our 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:24.720 solar system, or it could mean something like Sun Microsystems. 0:13:25.640 --> 0:13:29.880 And without any other context the web, the search engine 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:32.400 doesn't know what you want. So it's going to start 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:35.880 pulling up stuff that ranks really high based upon whatever 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:38.720 algorithm they use, whether it's Googles or Microsoft's or whatever 0:13:38.760 --> 0:13:41.640 search engine, and it's going to present those to you 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:44.480 on a page and and maybe mixed up it. Maybe 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:47.640 that you've got, you know, three or four astronomical links 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:52.280 and three or four technology links. And that's fine, but 0:13:52.360 --> 0:13:54.959 let's say that you know you have a semantic search 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:57.120 where it can tell what it is that you want 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:00.920 and every single link on that page is relevant, Well, 0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:05.440 that would be preferable and there it's tricky to do that, 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:08.280 especially if all you're doing is a one word search term, 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:11.800 because you know there's not there's no context there. If 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:14.720 you added more context in your search, then that would 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:17.839 narrow down the results. So the more terms you put, 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:20.520 in general, the more terms you put within a search bar, 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:24.760 the narrower the results will be when they're presented to you. 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:27.360 But you have to start trying to think the way. 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:31.440 You know, whoever is generating the information that you need, 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:33.680 you have to kind of think in their way in 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:37.200 order to get those search results narrowed properly, because if 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:39.560 you put something that's outside of that realm and it 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:41.760 makes sense to you, but it didn't necessarily make sense 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:44.760 to them, you might not get a result at all. Um. 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:47.240 I think it's important to note too that we're not 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:51.760 what we're talking about now is not necessarily the semantic web. Um. 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:54.760 The semantic web is uh, and I just wanted we're 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:56.760 not gonna get into that because that could be a 0:14:56.800 --> 0:15:01.640 series of podcasts. UM but basically the idea is similar. 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:07.040 What what we're talking about is context, um and uh. 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:10.800 In the semantic web, you're trying to create context between 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:14.880 two entities, this person doing the web browsing and the 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:18.240 stuff on the other end. Um. And that requires use 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:21.800 of a markup language called r d F Resource Description Framework. 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:25.160 And uh. There's actually a very excellent article on how 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:28.240 stuff works dot com written by pop stuff host co 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:33.359 host Tracy Wilson, um and our lovely site director. Um 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:35.440 and uh. And if you want to learn more about that, 0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:37.520 then I would recommend that you go read that article. 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:39.520 But um, you know, and at least until we talk 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:42.800 about it. But um, it's not and Google is careful 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:45.560 to make this note to They're not this isn't actually 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:48.560 the semantic web, but they are trying to create context 0:15:48.680 --> 0:15:53.000 by referencing what they know about you and the stuff 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:55.200 that is out there on the web. So it is 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:57.800 it is similar in that sense. Yeah, it's kind of 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:00.720 a it's kind of a step towards the entic web. 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:04.840 I think of it as semantic search simply because ultimately 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:08.360 it is looking for bits of information about whatever the 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:11.480 subject is that you are interested in and presenting it 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:14.040 to you in a unified way where you so that 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:16.040 you do not have to do all the searching yourself. 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:18.000 It will actually get into why that might be a 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:21.800 problem too, because there's there's some very legitimate concerns not 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:25.360 from a technology standpoint, but a business standpoint about this approach. 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:30.040 But let's say that, Uh, a computer, for example, doesn't 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:34.200 know the difference between any two categories of anything without 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:37.560 you telling it what that is. So so let's say 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:39.960 that you know you've got a picture. Let's say that 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:42.840 you've got a computer that can scan things, and it knows, 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:45.800 like you can type in what that thing is. All right, 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:48.880 so you scan a picture of a puppy dog, and 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:52.080 you scan a picture of a locomotive, and you say, 0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:55.000 this is a puppy dog, that's a locomotive. Well, the 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:57.400 computer doesn't know that a locomotive and a puppy dog 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:01.720 don't belong to the same category like other than stuff. 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:04.680 It doesn't know that a puppy dog is an animal. 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:07.880 Doesn't know a locomotive is a technology, it's a it's 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:12.000 a vehicle. Uh. It cannot make that determination until you 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:14.919 tell it. And then to get more complicated, let's say 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:18.960 William Shakespeare. You say, William Shakespeare is a playwright or 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:23.159 was a playwright, it's not currently working. William Shakespeare was 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:26.440 a playwright. William Shakespeare was a man. Well, you also 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:29.200 have to let the computer know that not all all 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:32.640 people who fit into the man category also fit into 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:37.160 the playwright category, right, Nor are all the playwrights men 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:41.840 like the computer does not know that automatically. Sorry, I 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:47.560 was something like Bacon. The point being that that very 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:52.520 small Shakespeare. I'm a mar Lovian myself. Actually it's not true. 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:57.680 I'm a stratford Ian. But the the entire, the entire 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:01.040 relationship of all these different categories are things that a 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:04.440 computer does not natively understand. So you have to actually 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:06.840 build this. We call these things, you know, we call 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:10.320 them taxonomy's, we call them ontologies. It's all about creating 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.520 these structures so that the computer can relate bits of 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.399 information to one another in a way that makes sense, 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:18.920 because otherwise, when you would do a search term, even 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:21.399 using one of these new products, you would just get 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:26.200 a a big batch of data that is not organized 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:30.240 in any meaningful way, you know. But this way, when 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:34.600 you actually categorize stuff and you build out these these structures, 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:38.159 within the computer system, so that computers can understand, all right, 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:40.320 we need to put this bit of information here and 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:42.119 this bit of information here, and that this is how 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:45.320 it's all going to be organized. Then it means something 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:47.000 to you when it comes back. So you might have 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:50.600 born on, died on, you know, famous works, that kind 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:54.760 of stuff. And in fact, both Bing and Google are 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:58.320 working on actually they're rolling out products that incorporate this 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:02.239 sort of result in searches. So with Google it's called 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:05.119 the Google Knowledge Graph, and it's a an idea where 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:09.080 if you were to do a search on any particular topic, UH, 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:12.080 you would have the main search results underneath the search bar, 0:19:12.200 --> 0:19:16.040 just as as per normal, but on the right there 0:19:16.080 --> 0:19:20.080 would be a little uh window that could open up 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:23.280 that would have information about whatever the subject of your 0:19:23.280 --> 0:19:27.000 search was. And it's possible that the information you want 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:31.480 is contained within that window. So if you're doing a 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:34.679 search on someone famous Leonardo da Vinci, you could end 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:36.240 up which is actually an example in one of the 0:19:36.320 --> 0:19:38.840 videos they show if you do a search for for 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:41.199 the Google Knowledge Graph, there's a video and on the 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:43.800 Google blog. Let's say you do that that, well, you 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:47.320 might get um, famous works of art that Leonardo da 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:50.440 Vinci painted as well as some of his contemporaries. Uh. 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:54.800 During the Renaissance, he painted his contemporaries. Uh, if they 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:58.240 stood still long enough. He was a very busy man. Anyway, 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:00.639 you would get like little details about his life. You 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:02.520 would see that kind of stuff, and and maybe the 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:04.639 answer to your question could be right there. So you 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:08.159 don't have to go into a search result. Uh. Now, 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:10.399 if you wanted to know about the inventions Leonardo da 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:13.200 Vinci made, and all you're getting back is art, then 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:16.480 you would require you to do another search or to 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:18.800 actually go to one of the links that pops up 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:23.240 under the normal search results. Um. But the Google says 0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:28.280 that they have already more than five million objects indexed 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:32.399 for this, with three point five billion facts about those 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:36.120 objects and about the relationship between objects, so that when 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:39.200 you do these searches, you're going to get the most 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:43.040 relevant information. And they say that the way that they're 0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:46.920 determining what is relevant versus not relevant is they're actually 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:51.160 looking at what people are searching for. So if if 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:53.920 nine percent of the people who are searching for Leonardo 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:57.320 da Vinci are searching for information about his works of art, 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:00.600 that's the information that's gonna pop up, and you do that, 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:05.080 just do the search without any more modifiers, which makes sense. 0:21:05.520 --> 0:21:07.399 You know, if the majority of the people are interested 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:10.320 in just that one aspect of him, then clearly that's 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:12.320 what should be presented to you. And then anyone who 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:14.760 needs more information just goes into the link, just like 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:17.960 you would on any other day. Well being is doing 0:21:17.960 --> 0:21:23.879 a similar thing. Rhyme, rhyme um. They have instead of 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:26.080 instead of the two column approaches, because you know, Google's 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:28.679 got the search results under the main column, and then 0:21:28.720 --> 0:21:30.639 to the right it's got the little window that pops up. 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:34.680 Being does three columns. The first column are the search results, 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:37.560