The role of Search Engines in Semantic Web / Web 3.0
January 23rd, 2007 by luke_s
The Semantic Web initiative intends to create a universal medium for information exchange. This is to be achieved by defining standards for data representation and then using these standards to put documents on the World Wide Web. This would allow data to be shared and exchanged easily for different needs, regardless of information location or format.
Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, is now leading the Semantic Web project and although he is confident about his concept of the future of the web, there is still confusion. The most common misconception is that Semantic Web and Web 2.0 are one and the same. Let us dispel this myth…
Web 2.0 is not the Semantic Web
When the Semantic Web project was born, it was referred to as Web 2.0. Today, Web 2.0 seems to be a by-product of the Semantic Web project. Contrary to some opinions, social networking, blogs, tagging and AJAX applications have a little to do with the Semantic Web concept. Although these sites offer better information sharing functionality, the data representation is still poorly structured from the Semantic Web perspective.
Tim Berners-Lee can only distinguish two versions of the Web:
- Web of documents, which he invented in 1989 and called World Wide Web, now also referred as Web 1.0, Web 2.0
- Web of data, which is also called Semantic Web or Web 3.0
Searching in the “Web of documents” vs. searching in the “Web of data”
As we can see, the way we search is going to be totally different. This also means that the role of search engines will change.
The role of Search engines in the Semantic Web (Web 3.0)
Search engines in the traditional web of documents have the task of finding relevant items in a sea of documents. These documents are presented in natural language and are connected with links. The Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) process in the traditional web is a process of removing these barriers and allowing search engines to understand and read content in the way search engines like.
The traditional web falls short when it comes to more complicated queries. For example, a computer might be instructed to compute the shortest distance from Edinburgh to London that would enable a visit to a Mexican restaurant after 2 hours drive, a petrol station and a florist that sells pink lilies. To perform this in the traditional web, we require search engines that are individually tailored to every website being searched. A semantic web would give us a single standard of data representation for all the websites, and asking this or a similar query would be possible - as Tim Berners-Lee says “The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialise.”
As for the search engines and their role in the Semantic Web, we can only guess how a search engine will look, or indeed if it will exist at all. However, the question should be what can we do to today to be ready for the new generation of the web in future?
Posted in Semantic Web |
