Google continued its acquisition spree Friday, snapping up a company that it hopes will set the stage for continued improvements to its search results by better understanding queries and web pages. Analysts said Metaweb could help Google shore up areas where Bing and Yahoo have gained ground.
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Metaweb maintains an open database of things in the world called Freebase. It’s a collection of collaborative knowledge from many different sources. Freebase set out to create a global resource for people and machines to access common information. Now Google will leverage it for internal use to help searchers answer questions.
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Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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Competing with Bing
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This acquisition is about creating more structure around the way Google presents content on search-results pages, according to Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. All the search engines have their version of one box or smart answers, Sterling noted, and Yahoo and Bing have done more than Google in this area.
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Metaweb gives Google technology and personnel to pull together disparate content from many sources into a more coherent presentation around a concept, place, personality and so on. It also gives Google Freebase, an open database of content that it can further develop as part of the overall plan to present richer information in search, Sterling said.
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Google will not be able to retain its dominant position in the market over time if it continues to simply present lists of links, he added. The company’s acquisition of Metaweb signals it wants to provide more structure and depth to the information it offers users.
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Freebase Plans
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Jack Menzel, director of product management for Google, said with efforts like rich snippets and the search-answers feature, Google is just beginning to apply its understanding of the web to make search better. He pointed to examples such as typing Barack Obama…