Hakia Semantic Search Taps Librarians for More Credible Results

Hakia recently announced an outreach to librarians and information professionals to help make its results even more credible. The company will be expanding its focus beyond the medical scope and wants the assistance of professionals to make sure that the next market it turns its focus on delivers results as trustworthy as its health results have been.

Hakia has been around for a while, offering users a place to find what they call a verified, social, semantic search engine. What this means is that not only do you get a form of semantic search, the folks at Hakia go a bit further and verify the results as well. This has been the case for those engaging in health searches using Hakia’s social semantic search engine.

By using tools such as the Medical Library Association to make sure the results you get for your searches are trustworthy, Hakia takes search a step beyond traditional search sites like Google that tend to deliver more results, but sort them by popularity based relevance. For those of us who prefer to do our own sorting, Hakia won’t be the answer, but if you are pressed for time or need to have more confidence in your medical search results, Hakia may be the option for you.

One of the company’s tag lines is “A popular Web source may not always be credible, and a credible Web source may not always be popular.” Hakia takes that to heart, making sure that the sites that might hold the most useful information get weighted properly in spite of popularity. They also offer a social aspect of their search engine for additional search options that incorporate a more social aspect.

Hakia hopes that the librarians and information professionals they tap for the new program will suggest URLs of credible sources on a variety of topics, which Hakia can then verify using its QDEX (Quality Detection and Extraction) system. The participants in the program will be unpaid, though they will receive small gifts such as books and conference grants as a kind of thank you for participating.

This is a smart move on Hakia’s part. This group is a largely untapped resource that already participates in the online space. If you are a librarian or information professional and would like to participate in the program, you can visit the Hakia sign up page.

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