Google and Wolfram Alpha showcase the future of smarter search

Artesian Solutions, a provider of web-based market intelligence and surveillance software, has revealed that 73% of sales and marketing executives believe that by automating the process of search through surveillance would create between 6 to 8 extra hours a week – time that could be spent on more business critical tasks. The research findings are aligned to the launch of Google and Wolfram Alpha’s adoption of semantic web technology.

Undoubtedly, one of the key factors attributed to the findings is the emergence of automated search and surveillance software. This enables businesses to generate the information that is required to run their day to day operations, such as market, sales and competitive intelligence – which removes a lot of the random element of researching online.

Although the use of search engines is commonplace in everyday working life, the science involved in matching key words to the unstructured information on the web leads to imprecise and frustrating results. With some 5,000 new pages of information being uploaded to the Internet every second the amount of information currently accessible from the Internet and corporate networks is now far beyond what any human can actually comprehend and physically process.

Andrew Yates, CEO at Artesian Solutions, comments:
“The growth of next generation web technologies such as Web 2.0 and the semantic web make the web more useful for business people as well as the consumer. Developments like Wolfram Alpha will ultimately mean business people can avoid ‘fumbling in the dark’ for the information they need. Closely aligned to these type of developments which have their routes firmly based in science and research we are already seeing the emergence of automated search and surveillance software which enables businesses to methodically and systematically generate the information that is required to run their commercial operations more effectively - such as market, sales and competitive intelligence – therefore avoiding random science.”

The survey was conducted by an independent research company on behalf of Artesian Solutions and consisted of in-depth telephone interviews throughout December 2008 and January 2009 with sales and marketing executives in 151 UK companies.