Lexxe is one of the new Semantic (”meaning based”) search engines that are designed to let you ask a question in plain language; for example, “How far away is Pluto?” Lexxe’s particular approach is called Natural Language Processing, or NLP. Other Alternative Search Engines (ASE or ‘Alts’) in this area of Search would be Cognition (CognitionSearch), Hakia (QDEX), and Accoona (Artificial Intelligence or AI).

Who is Charles Knight?

Not to be vain or anything, but since I just explored People Search engines yesterday, I asked Lexxe the question, “Who is Charles Knight?” I was listed as the #2 search result, (#1 is still the artist Charles R. Knight), and my activities were listed on the far left column as categories. Clicking on those refined the results even further; for example, to only sites that mention the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines list.

 

Currently, Lexxe only understands English, but that still allows them to include nine countries.

What is the difference between Lexxe and Google in terms of keyword-based search?

The main difference between Lexxe and Google in terms of keyword-based search is “Linguistic Analysis”. It means Lexxe treats the keywords as “words”, not symbols. Google and all other 2nd generation search engines’ algorithms place the quantity of the symbols as a priority, while Lexxe addresses the linguistic property within the keywords as a core issue for search. Lexxeuses sophisticated “Linguistic Computing” methods to analyse the keywords and decides what formula to use for the search depending on the linguistic features found.

Another very important difference between Lexxeand Google is, Lexxe does not use “website popularity” as a factor to decide if a webpage is relevant or not. The relevance of a webpage is decided by the matching between the keywords and the content of the webpage based on Lexxe’s linguistic computing and algorithms.

Dr. Hong Liang Qiao is the CEO of Lexxe, so I invited him to give us his “View from the Corner Office” someday soon. And, of course, I had to ask him:

Please explain the name “Lexxe”

“Lexxe”, pronounced ‘leksi’, is derived from a linguistic term “Lexical”, which means “related to words”. It emphasises the processing of language from the level of words and the meanings associated with them.

Please give Lexxe a try; ask it a question!

And whatever the results, post a comment!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 4:42 pm and is filed under Alts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.