[Sigia-l] Natural Language Searching vs Keyword Searching

[Holly Hanna]

On Fri, 20 Feb 2004, Gary Carlson wrote:
<cut>

> Tagging documents can be very expensive, so you need a good business
> justification to do so.  Even then, human tagging is not necessarily
> consistent or reliable.  Also, keyword tagging by humans becomes less
> effective unless there is a consistent and controlled list of terms that
> is used and understood throughout an organization.  This is also an
> expensive endeavor.

I would also add that unless the humans tagging the content have some 
grounding in basic indexing rules, keyword tagging using a structured 
controlled vocabulary may well inhibit precision rather than help it.  People 
tend to think that they should tag a content item with every controlled 
term that is applicable to their item, even when the terms in question 
have a hierarchical relation to one another.  This practice certainly 
increases recall, but what I've generally seen is that recall isn't the 
problem--precision is.

> 
> Good Luck

Ditto!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org] On Behalf
> Of david_fiorito at vanguard.com
> Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 11:25 AM
> To: sigia-l at asis.org; sigia-l-admin at asis.org
> Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] Natural Language Searching vs Keyword Searching
> 
> The company pitching natural language search to us talks a lot about the
> 
> ability to return an answer to a question rather than a set of links to 
> pages like a classic keyword search.  I for one am very skeptical of
> this 
> kind of claim.  I am especially skeptical since they are trying to sell
> us 
> on the idea that we will never need metadata again since their software 
> can somehow "understand" the content of a page.  The whole thing smells
> a 
> little fishy to me - thus the reason for my original post.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Ken Bryson" <kbryson at alias.com>
> Sent by: sigia-l-admin at asis.org
> 02/20/2004 12:39 PM
> 
>  
>         To:     <sigia-l at asis.org>
>         cc:     (bcc: David Fiorito/IT/VGI)
>         Subject:        RE: [Sigia-l] Natural Language Searching vs
> Keyword Searching
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >> Does anyone have any thoughts on the relative merits of these two
> types
> of search?  In >>what context is one more effective that the other?
> Pros/Cons of each?  Thoughts?
> >>Opinions?
> 
> > But if a natural language search returns several hundred or several
> thousands of
> > documents, then the search is pretty useless. That's when keyword 
> tagging
> becomes
> > important.
> 
> 
> I don't think it's just a matter of natural language sucks in all 
> instances
> over 10 documents. There's no reason you can't make good use of metadata
> 
> and
> thesauri AND put a natural language front end search on it.  When you do
> that, the differences between natural language and keyword boolean 
> searching
> becomes clear, at least from my own research.
> 
> Boolean searches are better for known item searches, and natural
> language
> searches are *sometimes* better for subject searches.  It all really 
> depends
> on the skill, or lack thereof, of the searcher.
> 
> 
> -kb
> 
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