jtara - 3:53 am on Dec 24, 2006 (gmt 0)

1. Most searches are inherently ambiguous in meaning, regardless of semantic analysis. ie. there is no right answer based onthe query itself. If I type in "digital cameras" I could be looking for reviews, the cheapest store, a list of only palm-sized cameras, phone cameras etc. Or "nevade real estate", am I buying, selling etc.

Searches are inherently ambiguous in meaning because serchers have been trained to remove the meaning from their searches.

Walk up to somebody on the street (or in a store) and say "digital cameras". Do you think you will get a meaningful response from them? Or a blank stare?

OK, in a store, you might get pointed to the right section of the store, and otherwise ignored because it will assumed you are foreigner who speaks almost no English and is going to be difficult to deal with.

Yet, this is how we have been trained to communicate with search engines. Unfortunately, it is now having spillover into the language.

This is not how people communicate. We don't communicate using keywords, because it is ineffective, frustrating, and devoid of nuances of meaning.

Why are we still communicating with computers this way?

Hint: it isn't because of laziness on the part of searchers. It's because they've been taught that this is the way it works. Computers don't understand sentences and paragraphs. They understand keywords. Anybody typing fully-formed sentences and paragraphs into a search box will be ridiculed as a newbie by anybody looking over their shoulder.