Semantic Search with Lexxe
After my last experiments with the semantic search engine Hakia, today I found this article about another semantic search engine: Lexxe. As Charles asked for Lexxe’s answers to other questions, I repeated my little set of questions and here are the results:
Again, I start with the question “What is the capital of Germany?”:
Answer: Berlin
A very good start, Lexxe gives us the precise and correct answer, where Hakia returned the Gallery of Germany, which contained the answer, too.
The extended version of “Is Berlin or Bonn the capital of Germany?” resuls in…
Answer: No.
The answer of Hakia to this question were very impressing, but Lexxes is not appropriate. Even if you consider the question not as a decision between Berlin and Bonn, but as “Is one of the cities the capital?”, the answer should be yes. To be fair, I should mention that Lexxe gave us an hint to this problem:
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Then I reformulate my question to “Is Bonn the capital of Germany?”
Answer:
Yes.
The question mark indicates, that the answer might not be reliable, due to lack of sufficient information. The search first two results to the second questions where
Bonn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
… agencies relocated to the former capital from Berlin and other parts of Germany. … Roman road linking the provincial capitals of Cologne and Mainz cut …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonn,_Germany - 77 KB
German Capital Moves from Bonn to Berlin - Geography
… in Berlin, signaling the transfer of the capital of Germany from Bonn to Berlin. … the Countries and Continents of t…Capitals of Every Country …
http://geography.about.com/library/misc/blbonnberlin.htm - 22 KB
On both pages, we can find correct explanations to these questions. So let’s move on to the philosophical questions: “What is the meaning of life?” Beside the unspectacular “Answer: Personal Philosophy“, the results are not bad:
Meaning of life - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life - 103 KB
Meaning of Life - gimme a break!
http://www.bek-bek.com/ - 6 KB
God, religion, and the meaning of life
http://www.meaning-of-life.info/ - 15 KB
At this point, I want to point on a nice feature of Lexxe that is not offered by Hakia, a clustering of the results. Lexxe identifies the following top 3 clusters (beside others):
The clustering is a very nice feature to narrow the search results on the really interesting ones. In this case, you probably should decide if you are looking for a movie or some philosophical guidance. (Some could argue that one doesn’t necessarily eliminate the other, but thats beyond the current scope…)
With the next question, Lexxe takes a firm stand: “Does God exist?”
Answer: Yes.
The search results contain another point of view:
Odds on that God exists, says scientist | Higher | EducationGuardian.co.uk
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/sciences/story/0,12243,1164894,00.html - 43 KB
So after all, I am curious to the answer on my last question: “What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?”
Answer:
Lives.
This time, Lexxe missed by a mile, the results give no answers as well. Probably Lexxe had difficulties with the complexity of this question with three combined parts.
Summary: Like Hakia, Lexxe is a promising approach to a semantic search engine. Both Hakia and Lexxe try to give explicit answers to your questions. Hakia seems to find the ansers on web pages. So, in many cases, the ansers are a bit diffuse, but often very good. Lexxe on the other side seems to answer the question with a short generated answer and often fails on more complex questions.
hakia, lexxe, search engines, Semantic Search, semantic search engine