Hakia is a relatively new search engine that wants to find and present search results in a new way.

The future of search is understanding information, not merely finding it. This is the claim of Dr. Riza Berkan, CEO of Hakia, a meaning-based or semantic search engine currently in beta. His motivation for plowing the field of ontological semantics is ultimately to compete with the giants of the search engine industry.

Pandia takes a look at Hakia to see what all this science yields in terms of search experience and relevance. We also talk to Dr. Berkan and Melek Pulatkonak, president and COO of Hakia, to get a lesson in “ontological semantics for dummies”.

Hakia Galleries

Lets say I am curious about the renaissance scientist Johannes Kepler. If I search Hakia for Johannes Kepler, I get a presentation page from the Hakia Galleries, containing a picture of Kepler along with search results grouped in categories like Biography and Timeline, Awards and Accomplishments, and Speeches and Quotes.

This is a very convenient way to get your search results presented if you do a wide search like this, for instance if you are doing research.

We ask Melek Pulatkonak about the galleries: “Currently, the Hakia Galleries answer around 600,000 popular queries in various topics of interest. Let me give you a few examples: piano, Hillary Clinton, coffee, India, breast cancer, red sox, Paris Hilton, Pokemon… You get the idea. We are expanding the coverage every day.”

Melek explains how the galleries are assembled: “Hakia galleries are distilled in a semi-automated process, a mixture of meaning-based technology and editorial process. Editors are involved in the automated gallery generation process as administrators.”

“Their role ranges from checking, correcting, and removing items that are inappropriate. Note that humans are not involved in acquiring search results, it is all automated,” she emphasizes.

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