Zitgist.com - New Semantic Web Query Service

Zitgist (pronounced "zeitgeist") is an industry standards compliant Semantic Web Query Service. Its goal is to help Web users locate data, information, and knowledge on the Web. Zitgist is based on a new search paradigm: users describe characteristics of their search target, instead of relying entirely on content keywords. “For example, if a user wanted to find music albums by Madonna from the years between 1990 and 2000, the old search would be for "Madonna", possibly adding "album", and if they had a very powerful search tool, a clause for "any of 1990, 1991, 1992, ... 2000" — and hope that someone had discussed all of these albums, mentioning both title and release date on the same web page. Now, the user now has the ability to describe the search target, in this case "music albums", with additional clarity that would include facts such as: published between 1990 and 2000, composed by "Madonna", who is a "Person". Then a list of relevant albums would be shown to the user -- possibly compiled from multiple web pages and multiple other data sources.

Right now Zitgist is in private beta, you will have to enter your web email address to receive an invitation. Zitgist offers something beyond just keyword searches, and addresses a problem with existing web query services. Often times, relying solely on content keywords will limit you to using fewer keywords to open up a broader range of results or presents you with results that contain these keywords but don’t pertain to the relationship of these keywords. By entering characteristics of the kinds of websites you want to be viewing, you are giving the engine more personalized feel and thus, achieving higher relevancy rates.

When will they come out in public beta? I don’t really think the Madonna example was very explicatory of their services. Is there a way they could clean up this example to make it clearer without having to read it a couple of times?