Stamford-based Xerox Corp. has introduced a “smart” search engine that it says will help users perform more relevant Internet searches.
Called FactSpotter, the software capitalizes on an increasingly popular field known as semantic searches that improve Internet research by analyzing the meaning of a question and a document to match the two for the best answer.
Developing the search engine is similar to understanding how brains process information, said Frederique Segond, manager of parsing and semantics research at Xerox Research Center Europe in Grenoble, France.
“Many words can be different things at the same time. The context makes the difference,” she said. “The tricky things here are not the words together but how are they linked.”
For example, a semantic search could help a user who wants to know who President Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president was. Common searches using keywords “Lincoln” and “vice president” would not likely answer the question.
But asking the question in a semantic search would yield the answer: Hannibal Hamlin.
A Multi-Year Plan
Segond, whose background is in math and linguistics, said Xerox has been working on the project for four years. FactSpotter was introduced at a technology briefing at Xerox’s research center in Grenoble and will be launched next year as part of Xerox Litigation Services.
FactSpotter promises to help researchers cut the amount of time required to find information by returning a specific portion of a search document that is relevant to the query.
“There’s this explosion of content,” said John Kelly, president of Xerox Global Services North America. “This is meant give you access to that.”
The new product will first be offered through Xerox Global Services, a $4 billion annual business that provides document management and consulting services. Kelly would not say how much revenue Xerox expects from FactSpotter.
Naveed Yahya, chief investment officer at Fischer Investment Group in Pittsford, N.Y., said the product will not likely have an immediate impact on Xerox’s bottom line, “but it helps them become a leader in the field,” he said.
Legal Applications
FactSpotter will initially be used to help lawyers and corporate litigation departments plow through thousands of pages of legal documents. Xerox also expects the technology to eventually be used in health care, manufacturing and financial services.
It’s part of a growing field in which researchers are trying to adapt to a computer the complex workings of the brain.
Dr. Riza C. Berkan, chief executive of privately held hakia.com in New York, which is indexing enormous amounts of Web-based information to provide improved Internet searches, said researchers are using principles of human thought as it relates to language.
“All searches today are at the tip of iceberg. The bottom of the iceberg is when you ask the complicated questions,” he said. “We’re one of the first ones to go in this direction and try to change search engines from stupid machines into intelligent and smart.”
