Twiggle unveils search technology ‘that allows any online retail company to take on e-commerce giants’

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Twiggle unveils search technology ‘that allows any online retail company to take on e-commerce giants’.

Twiggle has announced the debut of its Semantic API, which instantly gives retailers the ability to add a semantic layer to their existing search engines and interact with their online customers in a more personal and natural way.

This is the first offering from the Naspers and Alibaba backed company, whose mission is to help all online retailers provide 'best-in-class' online shopping experiences.

"In the world of online shopping, there are 3 or 4 e-commerce leaders and then there's everyone else," said Dr. Amir Konigsberg, CEO and Cofounder of Twiggle. "We're changing that by offering all online retailers the ability to achieve the kind of search quality that has been created by these giants, who have nearly unlimited resources and an army of engineers."

Most e-commerce companies are still relying on keyword matching and behavioral data to power their search. As a result, the relevance of search results is less than optimal because search engines are taking a "best guess" at matching customer queries to the items for sale. "But, when you teach a search engine to understand people the way people understand each other – you take the guess work out of matching the right products to the right queries – and you can get best-in-class results," said Konigsberg. "The kind of understanding (and customer service) that is effortless for a human store clerk can now be mimicked by a search engine."

Twiggle's patented technology relies on natural language processing to actually understand what the customer is looking to buy and match it to the items for sale. "Our customers will see significant improvements in relevance and recall from day one. They don't need to accumulate mass amounts of data to begin seeing results."

Twiggle is the first and only company offering semantic search capabilities without replacing its customers' search engines. "Search is core to our customers' business and they want to be in control. But they're always looking to leverage the latest technologies to improve conversion and gain a competitive advantage. This is where we can help," said Konigsberg.