Popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo! are known for churning out an endless number of results, but it’s sometimes difficult to know which are best.
One new search engine, Hakia, contends to be a meaning-based research tool that tackles its exploring differently.
To use this new search engine, go to: www.hakia.com
Melek Pulatkonak, chief operating officer of the search engine, said the site delivers understanding instead of objects. During a search, Hakia generates different galleries related to the topic being researched. For every search query entered, Hakia brings up relevant results.
“We don’t know what you want to learn, so we anticipate departure points,” Pulatkonak said.
For example, when searching for a topic such as “Orlando Bloom” the site displays a list of Orlando Bloom options including biographies, awards, and television and radio appearances.
Pulatkonak said this option can be helpful when beginning research because searching can be confusing when students don’t know exactly what they need.
Pulatkonak says Hakia, which became available in beta format during 2005, provides an interactive search experience as opposed to just bringing up popular pages.
Hakia’s Chief Scientific Officer Christian Hempelmann said he feels the site excels at assisting students with online research by helping answer complex questions.
“People search for key words and get generic results to play around with, but with us you can actually put in sentences and phrases,” he said.
Another aspect that differentiates Hakia from other search engines is, after a question search has run, the site highlights the answer to the question being researched, instead of bolding key words. This allows researchers to get answers without having to enter the specific site, potentially speeding up the research process.
However, students might not change their ways.
Dianna Schmidt, an advertising senior, spends a lot of time searching for information, and she said she mainly turns to Google. While she does admit Google can sometimes be confusing, she finds the site to be very accommodating.
“Google has everything you’d probably ever need, and I’ve never even heard of Hakia,” she said.
