In addition to verticals that claim to generate entirely new approaches from the major search engines and “human-powered” sites, the newest buzzwords have been “natural language search” and “semantic indexing.” Natural language search engine Hakia has done a bit better, launching a search engine in 2007 that uses portions of its natural language technology. Hakia analyzes the query to determine user intent. Search engines are tackling the challenge of determining user intent in a number of ways, including using personalization, overall user behavior, and social networking. But even if search engines such as Hakia can engineer this breakthrough, they still need query behavior to change to bring true value.
