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Google Buys Metaweb, Aims to Reduce Web Complexities

Posted on 18. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in News

It was announced earlier this week that Google has acquired Metaweb for an undisclosed sum in order to help it boost the Search product. Instead of just tagging everything with a keyword, Metaweb uses “Entities” in order to group a particular person, place or thing – namely because there can be many ways for people to describe it.

Despite the fact that Google offers the best search engine available, when it comes to difficult queries there still is a lot to be desired. Fortunately, the company is working to solve this issue, and the fact that Metaweb has already been able to bring together information on over twelve million topics is good news.

It’s also possible, however, that search results will become more commoditized than ever before. What do I mean by this? Instead of offering people search results based on websites with PageRank, we are seeing more often the first result come directly onto the page in an unlinked form. Sometimes the sources for these results are not necessarily from the top ranking sites.

While this may be helpful, and there is a Feedback link for these types of results, the reality is that Google’s role is to provide a platform for information, not spit out answers. Although Metaweb may be able to help Search find better answers, those results may increasingly come from sources decided by other means than allowing users to choose a site. Going back to the old method of results would help to further lessen the difficulties of an already complex web.

Tags: commoditized search results, complex web searches, difficult search queries, entities, entity, Google acquires Metaweb, Google Search, Metaweb, PageRank, reducing web complexities, search engine rankings, search results