Search Tools Product Report

LexiQuest

Product Information for LexiQuest Guide

Translates natural-language questions into search engine queries, translates across languages. For more information on these fucntions, see the SearchTools Reports on Natural-Language Searching and Cross-Language Information Retrieval.

Platform: Windows NT, Windows 2000, Sun Solaris Unix
Price: contact company

• Available in English, French and Spanish.
• Recognizes natural-language questions.
• Analyzes word forms, syntatical forms, meanings and concepts.
• Works with major search engines including AltaVista, Hummingbird, PLS, Verity and Lotus.
• Includes industry-specific dictionaries for finance, medicine, law, information technology and geography, and custom dictionaries.
• Respond uses the technology for automatic question-answering.
• Mine uses the technology for text mining, automatic classification and categorization (see the SearchTools Reports on Classification and Classification Tools).

Articles & Reviews

• Not by Words Alone: The Trend to Improve Information Retrieval LexiQuest White Paper by Sue Feldman, DataSearch Labs (registration required)
  Describes how linguistic tools can improve searches by reducing ambiguity and providing context.

Examples

• Apparently used by HotBot.