Sensebot is a new search engine that takes results from Google and Yahoo! and summarizes them into one concise digest on the topic of your query.

The idea is to help the searcher get a better grasp of what the relevant term is about. In this way he or she does not have to go through a large number of web pages with incomprehensible expert definitions (or any definitions at all).

Search result digests

Sensebot puts it this way: “Wouldn’t you rather click on one link and receive a concise summary, a digest on the phenomenon of [for example] the dot-com bubble, compiled from the top most relevant pages on the subject?”

If you are writing an article or a term paper you can use Sensebot to get an overview of the topic, and to identify the most relevant online resources.

Not perfect, but useful

Sensebot admits that its summaries will be far from perfect: “[It] would be unrealistic to expect SensBot to match a summary prepared by a human expert… However, we believe that even less than perfect summaries may be of great help for Internet users, and would be preferable to numerous links to Web pages.”

Beta testing

SenseBot is currently in a beta testing phase. The company is experimenting with using specialized targeted search engines and directories as a replacement for general web search results to improve the quality of the summaries. As they say:

“We also anticipate that the advent of Semantic Web and tools like Yahoo! Mindset will allow SenseBot to get a more accurate identification of the type of Web pages, thus decreasing the amount of ‘noise’ in the content, and improving the quality of generated summaries. We are open to partnerships in any of these areas.”

A summary of one or many pages?

According to Dmitri Soubbotin of SenseBot all top relevant pages are mixed together and analyzed as a whole repository of information about the user’s query.

This is not immediately reflected in the examples given by SenseBot, as SenseBot normally presents one link after the first and main summary. Hence it looks like the company is presenting an alternative web page description for this number one result, rather than summaries of text taken from several web sites.

Whatever may be the case, this summary does focus on an explanation of the term given in the search query.

In comparison Google will normally use a snippet of text from the web page that contains the phrase or the description given by the webmaster in the description metatag.

An example

The sample search result for ancient rome pets presents a very comprehensive and useful discussion of the role of pets in the ancient Roman household. In this example the Sensebot technology definitely work.

The problem in this case is that the summary is based on a book description and the link to the relevant page takes you to a publisher, not to an online article on Roman pets.

Most of the other summaries for this particular term are shorter — some of them relevant, some of them not.

An interesting approach

The samples provided by SenseBot demonstrates that this search tool is not ready for prime time — yet. The concept is interesting, though, and we believe that there definitely is room for such a search tool online.

In any case, New York based Semantic Engines LLCshould be able to sell or license its technology to existing search engines and metasearch engines that would like to add an additional useful feature to regular search results.

There is currently no search form available for testing (a screen shot from programmableweb indicates that it has been removed).

Sensebot home page
Search samples
AltSearchEngines debate between Liz Cohen from Answers.com and Dmitri Soubbotin of SenseBot.