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Sense Engine Moves Search Forward

In March this year a UK company announced they had patented a new application for search technology, dubbed the 'Sense Engine'. Is this the future of search in embryo?

In March this year a UK company announced they had patented a new application for search technology, dubbed the 'Sense Engine'. Is this the future of search in embryo?

By Deirdre Molloy

[Register and post your own comments on this article below...]

Crystal Semantics, the context-targeting company, has been granted a US patent covering its development of the world’s first Sense Engine technology. Already patented in the UK, this additional technology patent secures the core innovation of the Crystal Semantics Sense Engine in the large and dynamic US market.

But what is the Sense Engine? Perhaps a better point to start from is the reasons the Wales-based company developed the technology in the first place.

Anyone who uses search engines has come to expect a ton of irrelevant results served up from even the smartest input and framing of keywords. So the world-leading team at Crystal Semantics has developed the ‘Sense Engine’ in order to produce relevant search results by utilising the senses of words, rather than statistical algorithms.

Linguistic intuition drives the breakthrough

Their sense engine - named Textonomy - uniquely uses human linguistic intuition, tapping into the semantic relationships between words and the contexts in which they occur.

Because any word in the English language can be part of a search enquiry, the Sense Engine analyses each word in a web page or digital document to determine its potential to discriminate which context the search should cover. For example, it will determine the sense of the word 'depression' that a searcher requires in relation to economics, meteorology or mental health. The ‘Sense Engine’ identifies all the likely search words, advises the user of the different contexts the search should cover, and provides users with relevant results.

In effect, it removes the random factor in its analysis of textual content, and groups search results contextually, giving our interrogation of the web via search a powerful and much-needed coherence.

The patent outlines a structure where a database containing a ‘plurality of terms’ is used to define the placements of information within logical categories. The plurality of terms along with the classification of all the associated words are used to determine the particular subject. In everyday language, the words and senses of a dictionary are being accurately associated with the knowledge categories of an encyclopedia.

Range of powerful applications

Ownership of this technological process in the UK and US puts Crystal Semantics in a very interesting position. A continuance has been filed with the U.S. Patent Office to define Crystal Semantics’ new application areas of contextual advertising, search and navigation, categorisation, and e-commerce.

The Crystal Semantics’ patent covers the following development areas:

• databases of keywords to motivate which advertisements should be placed on a page, similar to Google's Adsense and Adword products
• word-sense disambiguation, using contextual data rather than computer algorithms to determine the correct sense of a word
• web-spidering techniques to extract keywords & concepts from web-pages, enabling search queries to find the most appropriate website results
• search-engine optimisation techniques, analysing documents or web pages to extract specific keywords that can be applied to other documents to enhance future navigation
• document classification techniques to enable categorisation and navigation of large bodies of textual content
• semantic pattern analysis to detect potential fraud or paedophile activity within Internet interactions.

The ‘Sense Engine’ is the result of a six-year search linguistics development programme undertaken by Professor David Crystal, a world authority on linguistics, encyclopedia editor and published author for Cambridge University Press and Penguin Books. £4 million has been invested in lexicographical and encyclopedic research, giving the ‘Sense Engine’ a classification system of around 2,000 categories derived from an encyclopedia component of over five million words.

Speaking of the furhter applications of this process. Ian Saunders, managing director at Crystal Semantics said: "We provide a semantic analysis of the senses and diverse meanings of words that not only enhances search and navigation, but provides a unique and valuable method for marketers to target relevant ads at consumers."

A www that supports our lives

"Furthermore, this patent will have an impact on the industry, as up to now analysts have suggested that our approach was too labour intensive, would not scale and just could not be done. Crystal Semantics has proved that this is not the case and in doing so, will bring about a new era in context targeting."

For once this is not your usual PR overstatement. Combine results that we want with advertising that is relevant and the notion of the WWW as an intelligent entity (albeit, an intelligence gained by human configuration) and a medium that makes our lives easier (and hence really SUPPORTS our daily existence) has taken a step closer to being realised.

Nice to see British expertise delivering useful innovation on a par to the best emanating from Finland, Korea and the US.

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NMK Event - New Directions In Search, 23 June 2005 @ 01ZeroOne, Soho
Discuss the latest trends in local vs global search, integrated search, metasearch and mobile search from leading search engine and SEO/SEM companies including Overture, Infospace and Seekport at New Directions In Search on 23 June.

About Crystal Semantics:
Crystal Semantics (www.crystalsemantics.com) has developed Textonomy, the first Sense Engine to deliver significantly more accurate and powerful Internet search and contextual results. The Textonomy suite of products includes solutions for search and navigation, e-commerce and contextual advertising. Based in the Welsh town of Holyhead, UK, Crystal Semantics is a division of Crystal Reference Systems Limited – a context targeting company and was founded in 2001 by Professor David Crystal, a world authority in linguistics, and managing director Ian Saunders. It has provided online content for many major publishers including Penguin Books, A&E Television Networks and Webster Publishing and is one of the fastest growing online content publishers in Europe.