Since a single word usually has many meanings, unknown to WWW search engines, it is difficult to find information about software with very common names.
The most popular English word, ‘the’ is also the name of THE multiprogramming system. A more well-known example is TeX, written in a way nearly impossible to typeset with a non-TeX-based system, since the name of TEX was already used then.
This is a much larger problem for search engines which find subsets of words, e.g. treating ‘tex’ as a part of ‘text’. Case-insensitive finding of whole words (with inflected forms) is also popular, but it makes finding information about LaTeX or latex (but not both) more difficult.
This may be partially solved by algorithms like PageRank. A Google search for ‘TeX’ returns on the first page only pages about TeX, for ‘LaTeX’ most are about LaTeX. But it just helps for one particular meaning. For example, it helps finding information about Python, but not a python.
There is a partial solution – find ‘python snakes’ instead of ‘pythons’ (although ‘pythons’ does not refer to the Python programming language, it refers to Monty Python). This clearly does not work in all situations and sometimes it is difficult to determine appropriate keywords.
I found a similar problem when searching for useful texts about From the Teeth of Angels, a novel by Jonathan Carroll. Since Carroll is so popular in Poland, I found mostly links to shops selling the book. When I want to buy a book, I use search engines specific to some shops where finding texts about the books is not a problem.
These problems show that using one search engine for everything leads to most difficulties. Specialized search engines avoid the problem. But is there any other solution?
We represent concepts by words. So instead of words, other representations of concepts should be more useful. For example, the symbol ‘i’ has different uses in complex arithmetic, procedural programming and in Latin (the two last meaning are used nearly everywhere else). We may use a different language with complex descriptions of meaning of each term used. When a review is known as a review, we may know that it is not a shop offer.
Even if it is possible to describe terms useful in real life in an unambiguous way, it would be additional work. Therefore it will not be done in at least some cases, making the problem smaller or the same as without it.
