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Re: Will Natural Language Supplant Keywords In Advertising?

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Re: Will Natural Language Supplant Keywords In Advertising?

Burak — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:28:21 -0000

Does Powerset require users to search semantically, or does it do a better job of indexing the web using semantic voodoo?

If it's the former then I don't see this catching on until people regularly commiunicate with computers through speech. When using a search, human users have got used to stripping down a query to its essential keywords. This works well with search, and it's quicker to type. SMS messaging and txt spk has shown that people are able to stip down phrases to the bare essentials, and they like doing it. A semantic query is just too long and cumbersome, and I don't see how it will help anyone except the few remaining over-65's that haven't figured out how to use Google.

Re: Will Natural Language Supplant Keywords In Advertising?

LetterRep.com — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:36:37 -0000

I hope this harkens the advent of people writing well and not with sloppy keywords or keyword phrases.

http://www.LetterRep.com

Re: Will Natural Language Supplant Keywords In Advertising?

Sid Savara — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:53:07 -0000

Personally, I think you need to be able to offer both. As an advertiser, I don't care whether you're figuring out the searcher's intention, or whether based on keywords I can figure out their intention - all I care about is when I get 1 buying customer for every X dollars I spend on ads, am I making enough to justify bidding on the ad - whether it's a "concept", keyword, or whatever. I think at some point though with all the data being collected about surfing habits, there will be amazing granularity - like, show my ad to someone who just visited Nike.com and now is searching for "running shoes" - because as an advertiser, perhaps I know that that's where I can make a sale.

Re: Will Natural Language Supplant Keywords In Advertising?

Julie Kentwood — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:52:50 -0000

I wouldn't be surprised if Powerset ends up in some back data center at Microsoft never to be heard from again.

Re: Will Natural Language Supplant Keywords In Advertising?

Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:44:53 -0000

I think it's difficult to imagine how the sales to advertisers will work since we can't really see anything in action. If it works as you say, cost to advertisers will be highly inflated and thus not as efficient as AdSense.

Given the complex inner workings of the system, though, I hafta think that there will be a far more elegant solution than you describe.

Re: Will Natural Language Supplant Keywords In Advertising?

o_h_r_i — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:30:04 -0000

I think adverting keyword algorithms are too closely tied to search engine algorithms. People adjust their search words to whatever the search engine gives best results for , and advertisers bid on that. So Powerset may have a point in order to reduce keyword wastage by advertises , but Microsoft may need to incorporate natural language processing in live.com as well. Which could be a really cool thing, since they dont have much market share to lose.

Ajay
www.decisionstats.com

Re: Will Natural Language Supplant Keywords In Advertising?

Douglas Lampi — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:17:15 -0000

Wait a minute!

What about all the work on LSI (latent semantic indexing) that better sorts ranking of content based on its similarity to natural language?

Shouldn't that also work to improve the relivancy of advertising in search results?