In Part II, I opined about the limits of topical search, and said we need web search that truly informs us, rather than just overwhelms us. To support our decisions, we need search that brings in attitudes, emotions, and all the other aspects of the decision we're trying to reach. Then, and only then, will search deliver us a manageably-sized, adeqautely relevant body of content upon which to base our decisions.

When I want advice on how to fix the alternator on my old Saab, I want the answer, not thousands of versions of the question posted by other people as clueless as I. And I sure don't need the first hundred search results to be look-alike websites that want to sell me a new alternator. "Fix" means I actually don't want to buy one, right?

To get what I want, however, I need two things that search doesn't provide, yet. Firstly, I need the search engine to permit me to dialogue on the basis of what I'm really after, more than just topical keywords and Boolean constructs like "and", "or" or "not". And secondly, I need that search engine to be able to find the real meaning in the content it indexes: the emotions, attitudes, etc., so it can match what it has indexed to what I really want. By the way, if the search engine can do that, it can also put up ads to which I might actually respond.

Currently, we're 0 for 2. Or, to be fair, like 0.2 for 2.