Researchers of the University of Tokyo have developed a software which will be able to select results from a Google query and distinguish unique names and identities from the results.

The NewScientistTech gives the example of Michael Jackson: Michael Jackson is, of course, a big expert in beers, but he's also a old american singer in eighties. Those two persons are on the first page of a Google query and this is the problme: which web site talks about who ?

When a user searches for a name on web search engine, the program will look at the first 100 results returned, and examines common words in the search summary to see if the results will relate to different people of the same name. The program will also give users an estimation on how many different identities for the same name have been returned.

The firsts tests reveal that the software is between 70% and 95%. Co-developer of the program, Danushka Bollegala, reckons that the tool will really help webwatchers to refine their searches: "The keywords extracted by the algorithm can be used to suggest better queries to the user".

When writing those lines, Bollegala has not been bought by Google yet...

Source: NewScientistTech, thursday.