Semantic search engine fails

Sep 06
2009

Newly launched semantic search engine HealthBase has listed “Jew” as a cause for AIDS. The official explanation is that this was caused by homonymy (words with the same spelling but different meaning):

The showcase was not configured to distinguish between the disease “AIDS” and the verb “aids” (as in aiding someone).

This was corrected shortly after spotted, but the search engine still suffers from poor analysis results. For example, in the causes of swine flu, we get “Australia”, “Vietnam”, and “Authority”:

HealthBase results on the causes of swine flu