Hakia is a “meaning based” search engine that claims to have a greater understanding of the semantics behind the queries that you feed it. Simply put, instead of just parsing keywords, Hakia is capable of some rudimentary understanding of context.

A survey done by the Hakia team claims that about 17% of users believe that Hakia is better than their current search engine and 7% will use it exclusively. I wanted to see how well Hakia stood up against two search engines that I often use — Google and Ask.com. I decided to compare the first search result as well as the “value added” for three search strings.

Where Should I Eat In New York?

Hakia is based out of New York so I thought it would be interesting to ask the engine a question about the city. Google’s first result was entirely wrong, instead giving me a site about eating out on Valentine’s day. Ask was a little better, but its result was just a general guide to New York. Ask did, however, provide a video clip about eating out in New York. Hakia gave directions to a specific restaurant in New York (linked through the AOL City Guide) but still did not really answer my question.

The winner in this case was Ask.com, as it was the only engine to provide the answer to my question (through the video) without having to refine my search.

How Do I Take A Fourier Transform?

All three engines did passably well on this query. Google and Ask.com both provided a first result that answered my question. By chance, Ask’s result was slightly better (the tutorial was more complete). What I did like about Hakia’s query was that the arguably best tutorial of the three was highlighted result.

Hakia wins this round because it made it very easy for me to find the answer to my question. The victory, however, is only marginal. All three engines gave me pretty good results.

What Is The Capital Of Virginia?

This was a toss up. For a general knowledge question like this, all three engines performed admirably. I was a little disappointed in the breadth of additional information that Google provided, but it did answer my real question immediately. Ask and Hakia both gave in-depth guides to Virginia on top of the answer, with Hakia’s guide being the better of the two.

Once again, Hakia wins a marginal victory in this round.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Google never touted itself as a Semantic search engine and while it does well when put to the test, Ask and Hakia both provided better answers to queries phrased as questions. The difference between Hakia and Ask were marginal, and I doubt that too many consumers would be able to see a significant difference.

What I will say is that the fact that Hakia is even capable of going toe to toe with these other two engines in its BETA stages says good things about the company. If it is ever going to make real waves in the search marketplace it will have to get much better. You can’t beat companies like Google by being just as good as they are, you have to be substantially better.

If you are looking for answers to general interest questions, Hakia might be the engine for you. As of now, however, it doesn’t do too much more than a well phrased Google search.

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