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Powerful search engines, new displays recently launched by local Net portals
October 26, 2009
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| Korea’s Web portals are getting smarter by the day, with operators competing to introduce tools that anticipate what the user is “really” looking for. This month, on its portal Nate, SK Communications introduced a semantic search system, which uses networks of relationships between terms - rather than simply on the number of times a term appears or the number of hits a certain site receives - to determine the intention of the user and generate accurate results. Nate is the first Korean portal to feature the method. Type in the name of actor Lee Min-ho, and the new Nate search gives results that include key information such as Lee’s height and weight, his TV drama roles and his favorite food. The user can then click on these narrower categories for other relevant information via different online documents or blogs. Nate’s “issue time line” is another smart search function, which lists the amount of information about a certain keyword that has been made available online over the past year. For example, if a celebrity was caught up in a dating scandal, the search engine would display a bar graph of related information about the celebrity since the story broke, including how it progressed over time. “Semantic search is rising as the next-generation paradigm for online search overseas. With this advanced technology, we intend to rise above the traditional portal market,” said In Chi-bum, public relations head at SK Communications. But Naver has introduced its own new methods to keep its No. 1 spot in the Korean portal market. It recently started offering a “collection ranking” service, which lists search results that have the highest “satisfaction ratings” from users first. Unlike other user ranking systems, which display search results based on the most clicks, Naver’s method focuses on how happy users were with their experience. “This service is a state-of-the-art search technology that even top global portals are still in the process of perfecting,” said Lee Jun-ho, chief operating officer at NHN, which operates Naver. Naver also recently began offering automatic spelling correction, to find the right results even if the user makes a mistake in typing in the term. Daum, Korea’s second biggest portal, has upgraded its keyword searches that usually take place on a daily basis to make them easier to use. When a user types in words related to the horoscope, weather, currency, music or another topic, the portal includes additional information. For example, type in “weather in Gangnam district,” and the portal will show the weather in southern Seoul today, tomorrow and the following day. Type in “music for a rainy day,” and Daum lists various tunes in that category. Meanwhile, Yahoo Korea has been emphasizing its blog search, which breaks market boundaries to offer results from major blogs on Naver, Daum and other local portals, listed in order of quality. Award-winning blogs are placed right at the top of the list. By Kim Jin-hee, Cho Jae-eun [jainnie@joongang.co.kr] |
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