Internet marketing techniques like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising would be boosted by semantic search technology.

A report by Laurie Sullivan in MediaPost cited a recent study which found that just 20 per cent of 325 participants would "occasionally click" on sponsored links on search results.

While the advantage of PPC advertising is that companies don't have to pay for their online marketing unless someone does click on it, they would surely want more interest than just 20 per cent.

However, semantic search will be the way of the future, Melek Pulatkonak, president of semantic search engine Hakia, told attendees at the Global Internet Summit 2008.

"If ten per cent of people click on sponsored links today, semantic search would increase that to 50 per cent," she claimed.

Ms Pulatkonak went on to make some even bigger claims, outside of the internet marketing sphere, including that the technology will allow us to "chat with [our] search engine in instant messenger".

While discussing the news over a cup of tea with our PC may not quite be with us yet, is semantic search soon to become the dominant technology in the search world?

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