Semantic Web Search Engines

Abstract

The last couple of years have seen an increasing growth in the amount of Semantic Web data made available, and exploitable, on the Web. Compared to the Web, one unique feature of the Semantic Web is its friendly interface with software programs. In order to better serve human users with software programs, supporting infrastructures for finding and selecting the distributed online Semantic Web data are needed. A number of Semantic Web search engines have emerged recently. These systems are based on different design principles and provide different levels of support for users and/or applications. In this chapter, a survey of these Semantic Web search engines is presented, together with the detailed description of the design of two prominent systems: Swoogle and Watson. The way these systems are used to enable domain applications and support cutting-edge research on Semantic Web technologies is also discussed. In particular, this chapter includes examples