MSearchGroove

Mobile search was always exciting (at least for me - I’ve followed key developments since 2003). However, the rise of alternatives to Google in mobile (which MSG expertly tracks here and for our partner, AltSearchEngines), forces us to change our pre-conceived notions about what it takes to win, as well as the line-up of companies likely to dominate the winner’s circle.

What is the mobile search ecosystem? Has it been properly defined and are there different value chains depending on the search engine provider? (That is, does partnering with a branded search provider vs. a white-label provider produce a significantly different value chain and/or impact the role of the mobile operator, ad networks and software/app providers?) Great questions - and ones that I, together with Juhani Kivikangas, VP Content, TeliaSonera, and Marc Bookman, CEO, MCN Inc., explored during our panel discussion at the recent Mobile Advertising 2008 conference in Brussels. (More about that in a later post - going to be a catch-up weekend…)

By coincidence, we honed in on the role of search as a must-have component of all services - not just ones offered by mobile operators and the usual suspects. In fact, Marc pointed out that MCN sees increased interest and demand from content companies and services providers. For me, this statement is a clear confirmation that change is underway in how mobile search companies must express and execute on their value propositions going forward. Will content companies partner with branded search providers who are also competitor portal providers and whose intentions are difficult to divine? I have my doubts…

As search becomes a service proposition, the landscape will no doubt have to make room for more vertical search engine companies and new types of companies we can’t yet identify let alone name. (There will also be ample room for a mobile search platform provider to bring all this together in a list of actionable results.)

Case in point is the move this week by semantic search engine hakia to offer syndicated search feeds to third-party companies and mobile applications providers. The first company to leverage this is Berggi, a provider of mobile consumer apps. Using the hakia syndication service Berggi has already released an alpha version of a mobile search application for the global market. If you’re in the U.S., the search app is compatible with AT&T and Sprint phones (Blackberry and iPhones excluded).

I caught up with hakia CEO Dr. Riza Berkan to better understand the service and the big-picture strategy around opening up the API to encourage developers to bake semantic search into their mobile apps. (Thanks to Riza for the briefing and to Farrah Hamid, hakia Communications Coordinator, who provided the screen shots below.)

As hakia is a new name in the mobile search space, I’d like to present a quick over view of the company and its capabilities.

KEY FACTS ABOUT HAKIA.COM

– Founded in 2004, hakia is privately held and based in New York City. hakia is currently in public BETA mode at http://www.hakia.com and in final stages of development.

– hakia has raised $21 million in funding to date. (hakia’s institutional investors include Prokom Investments S.A (Poland); Noble Grossart Investments Limited (U.K.), a subsidiary of Noble Grossart Limited; Alexandra Investment Management (U.S.), an SEC-registered investment adviser; and KVK (Turkey): the largest distributor of mobile telecommunication services and products in Turkey.)

– hakia is a “general purpose” (translated: universal) semantic search engine, covering the Web and databases.

How does it work in mobile? Riza tells me hakia takes the query from the third-party and processes it. “In practice, Berggi send the query to the Hakia syndication system, hakia sees that query and sends back the search results in an XML format.”

The mobile search results are essentially Web results. However, the syndication service goes beyond this to offer a list of features, which are explained in depth on the company blog. They include:

· News Search - brings news articles for a given query

· Vertical Search - brings search results from a vertical or from a particular database

· Summarizer - provides a summary of a given text block or URL

Other features are in the pipeline including image and video search.

Hakia’s Syndication Web Services are free for up to 30,000 requests per day for search services (unlimited free queries for Quotes and Cartoons), and free for up to 1,000 requests per day for XML feed calls.

Is semantic search a fit with mobile? It’s a point we could debate, but Riza has some powerful arguments. Vendor spin aside, mobile most definitely must deliver a different user experience than we know on a PC.

As Riza put it: All major search engines today - Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft - use statistical models, which means they base their results on how popular content is. It’s a popularity contest and the results are a lot like what you get on CNN. The world over the news is pretty much the same.” However, the mobile phone is a personal device and users will demand relevant results that are a perfect fit with their individual query.

The big opportunity on the horizon is mobile search. “With mobile devices you need more accurate and more creative approaches to search….You need a result that appears as a coherent sentence instead of ellipses and three dots in between, and the bolded keywords.” (You can compare the online search experience here.)

Riza need not convince me of the value of semantic search. But I have to wonder if the search giants aren’t also on to what matters on mobile. As some suggest, semantic is without a doubt the gap that Google & Co need to fill (Yahoo has already made a first move in that direction with its SearchMonkey platform) - but it is also one they could easily plug with an acquisition. Hakia is obviously an attractive candidate now that it has gone mobile and opened its API (truly in the spirit of Mobile Web 2.0), as are other semantic start-ups such as Powerset.

UPDATE: This just in minutes after I post - Microsoft is set to buy semantic search engine Powerset. Story here.

No matter what - I’m watching the advance of semantic search and the impact on mobile advertising. Better quality search results (thanks to semantic search) aren’t only likely to boost mobile search usage in general; they could also bubble up loads of long-tail content, such as blogs and niche sites, just ripe for keyword marketing and other search monetization schemes.

BTW: Both hakia and Berggi have expressed interest in a podcast to discuss topics including this, so watch this space. It just so happens that AltSearchEngines is going to launch its own bi-weekly podcast series, and a cross-post with MSG is a perfect fit.

(Disclaimer: MCN is an MSG supporter.)

• Posted in
• Location-based services, Mobile Social Networking, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising, Local Search

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