The Web has become the world¿s largest database with search being the main tool that allows
organizations and individuals to exploit its huge amount of information. Search on the Web has
been traditionally based on textual and structural similarities ignoring to a large degree the
semantic dimension i.e. understanding the meaning of the query and of the document content.
Combining search and semantics gives birth to the idea of semantic search. Traditional search
engines have already advertised some semantic dimensions. Some of them for instance can
enhance their generated result sets with documents that are semantically related to the query
terms even though they may not include these terms. Nevertheless the exploitation of the
semantic search has not yet reached its full potential. In this book Roberto De Virgilio
Francesco Guerra and Yannis Velegrakis present an extensive overview of the work done in
Semantic Search and other related areas. They explore different technologies and solutions in
depth making their collection a valuable and stimulating reading for both academic and
industrial researchers. The book is divided into three parts. The first introduces the readers
to the basic notions of the Web of Data. It describes the different kinds of data that exist
their topology and their storing and indexing techniques. The second part is dedicated to Web
Search. It presents different types of search like the exploratory or the path-oriented
alongside methods for their efficient and effective implementation. Other related topics
included in this part are the use of uncertainty in query answering the exploitation of
ontologies and the use of semantics in mashup design and operation. The focus of the third
part is on linked data and more specifically on applying ideas originating in recommender
systems on linked data management and on techniques for the efficiently querying answering on
linked data.
