Search Engine SenseBot Goes Vertical!
In which SenseBot releases tools to build a summary of Web pages selected by users.
In its generic version, SenseBot summarizes Web pages from the first page of results returned by either Google or Yahoo or Live. The search results on the first page are supposed to be the most relevant ones, representing the subject of the user’s query from across the Web. The idea behind SenseBot is to serve a text summary of these top results, providing a quick grasp on the topic of the query and sometimes obviating the need for the user to drill down into individual sources.
The latest update to SenseBot is intended to apply the same technology to various vertical areas. The advantage of going in this direction is that in a vertical space, the user intent can usually be better understood, and the set of Web pages is narrowed down. This allows to produce summaries of higher quality than on a generic search engine’s results.
There are two new tools:
A Web page interface allowing the user to enter a query and the URLs of pages to be summarized. A summary of the specified pages is produced.
An XML Web service allowing an external client application to pass a query and a set of URLs to SenseBot, and receive a summary as its output.
The tools are intended for companies that want to assess the applicability of SenseBot technology to their particular domain of knowledge or interest. We extend a special welcome to vertical alternative search engines, sharing Charles Knight’s vision of alts teaming together to create a viable alternative to major search engines. Some of the verticals we think can particularly benefit from our approach are: financial news and research; medical information; legal information; competitive intelligence; education; libraries; etc.
