Yahoo! looks at a more semantic web

While Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is cozying up to Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) in preparation for the software company acquiring the internet visionary, Yahoo! still wants to be somewhat innovative. In that vein, Yahoo! has said that it wants to incorporate pieces of the "semantic web" into its search index. You know, the one that comes a long second place to Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG)search engine -- but one that is still used heavily all over the world.

The semantic web is like a second version of the "world wide web" that looks for the actual meaning of data on a given website instead of just topic relevance to a search like it stands today. The semantic web draws many more variables between web content to really produce valuable feedback to web searchers. Web indexers would need to determine "meaning" of website content instead of just "relevance."

Would this make any difference to Yahoo!?Even if the company's search engine were to give back more meaningful search results (instead of the most topical), trying to get this concept across to the average web surfer would be extremely difficult. This would not be a competitive advantage against Google (that battle has already been fought), but would give Yahoo! a different search product in a manner of speaking. That is, unless Google begins offering "semantic web" search results as well.