Our use of textual information on the Web or on internal systems has been fundamentally limited because our systems for processing this data do not understand the meaning of that data. Instead, we construct searches using word combinations as an 'indicator' or 'proxy' for the content we are trying to find. The results of our searches can be incomplete because we can not find an identical match.
Semantics is the study of the meaning of words or phrases, given the context in which they are written. Semantics provide the possibility of differentiating search results when words are present but used in a different context (eg orange the colour and Orange the telecoms company). Semantics also provide the possibility of including search results that do not use the exact words specified in the search but have the same meaning (or a subset of meaning). For instance, in searching for references to America, you would wish to see references to USA and (as a subset), California.
Understanding the meaning of text offers huge opportunities to business. It means that you can trawl larger amounts of data for information, knowing that you do not have to apply a human filter to the search results. It means that you can identify, extract and manipulate data within unstructured text that would previously have been very problematic. And it means you can use intelligent searching rather than just free text.
If you deliver services or data on line, Semantic technology WILL do one of the following three things:
- Enable you to improve your service delivery
- Enable you to make such a radical improvement that your business becomes synonymous with the industry (as Hoover is to vacuum - cleaners or Google to Search)
- Enable your competitors to do it first