kaled - 7:54 pm on Dec 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

John316 said

You are still focused on key words, the purpose of semantics is to discern user intent. While kw still play a role, the factoring in of intent (intending to purchase) gives a new perspective to how pages are ranked.

Most searches consist of a few keywords. Whilst it may sometimes be possible to distinguish a meaning from a few keywords, generally it is not. It therefore follows that any algo that tries to do so will have a very high failure rate. It therefor follows that any search engine that filters results according to a guessed meaning will frequently fail to satisfy the user.

If Google move in this direction, user satisfaction will fall and users will go elsewhere. I'm beginning to see an increase in hits from MSN.

I'm sorry, but good as Google engineers may be, I don't believe they can build a psychic search engine. Discerning intended meaning from a few keywords is not possible in the general case, nor shall it ever be in the future. And if you can't discern the user's intent, discerning the meaning of web pages/sites is almost certainly a complete waste of time.

Kaled.