Help
Search Results
Powerset provides different kinds of results depending on whether you are searching based on a broad topic, a simple question, or more complex questions and phrases. While we do not claim to be able to directly answer all of your questions, we will help you find documents related to your query if they exist in Wikipedia and Freebase.
Freebase
Retrieve important facts about a name from Freebase, an open, community-built, reference database from Metaweb.
Powerset also answers a wide array of queries using Freebase.
- Try:
- films starring Tom Cruise
- paintings by Vincent van Gogh
- When was Abraham Lincoln born?
- Who founded Google?
- What awards has Neal Stephenson won?
Here are some of the other areas we cover, along with sample queries:
- People:
- Who did Madonna marry?
- Where did Barack Obama attend school?
- How did John Belushi die?
- Business:
- Who did Microsoft acquire?
- What is Google's market capitalization?
- Film:
- Who directed Raiders of the Lost Ark?
- Who starred in Aliens?
- What films has Woody Allen written?
- What awards has Meryl Streep won?
- T.V.:
- Who stars in the television show Heroes?
- creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Sports:
- Who plays for the Los Angeles Lakers?
- Who won the 2002 World Series?
- What team does Brady Quinn play for?
If you aren't getting a result you expected - for example, information you retrieved on one sports figure isn't coming back on another - it may be that the information hasn't yet been entered into Freebase. You may want to enter it yourself.
Factz from Wikipedia™
Factz are information compiled from pages across Wikipedia. They are expressed in 3 parts, two "things" connected by a "relationship," such as, "Al Gore : won : Nobel Prize." Subjects ("Al Gore") are shown in column 1, relationships ("won") in column 2, and objects ("Nobel Prize") in column 3.
Click on a word to select one of the factz and reveal the sentences that support it, along with their Wikipedia page locations. Click "more" (right and bottom) to expand the results.
Of course we are using the word "fact" loosely since many fictional things are asserted in Wikipedia.
Factz are a great way to explore an issue or person you don't know much about.
- Try:
- Henry VIII
Henry VIII will return results that include the verbs "dissolved," "granted," and "married." Let's look at the first row, which shows things that Henry VIII dissolved. Clicking on a word in the third column, such as "monasteries," reveals the sentences from across Wikipedia that assert that "Henry VIII dissolved monasteries."
The initial Factz display often represents only a small proportion of the ones we have extracted from Wikipedia. If there are more results, a more button at the bottom of the section allows you to incrementally expand by an additional 25 relations at a time.
When you ask a question whose answer can be expressed in the three-part Factz format (subject-relationship-object), Powerset often provides a list of answers.
Remember, you'll only see these Factz when your question is very direct: what/who verbed something, or what/who did something verb.
Highlighting
Highlighted text represents the part of the search result that matches your query. The more text you see highlighted, the more confident we are that it is a good match. Sometimes you'll see brighter orange highlighting on words that answer who, what, when, and where questions.
Miniviewer
- Click this icon to the left of the search results to preview a Wikipedia article without leaving the results page. Navigate by clicking on the article outline to the right or using the scroll bar.
Within the miniviewer:
- Click between result passages.
- View images from the page.
- Expand the preview window size by clicking and holding the bottom bar.
- Increase the font size.
Wikipedia Pages on Powerset
Wikipedia pages on Powerset contain the same content found on Wikipedia. But because we have read and summarized every page, we give you features to quickly scan an article or find a particular piece of information.
Similar to the Factz feature on the search results page, Powerset extracts information in the form of "factz triples" (subject-relationship-object) from the sentences of each Wikipedia article. You can view these factz using Show Factz or Explore Factz.
Explore Factz
Explore Factz lets you view at a glance names, things, and actions in the page. When you click on a word we highlight factz (subject-relationship-object) containing that word in the article outline. Click on a fact in the outline to go directly to the sentence.
In the things list, all proper names appear first, then other nouns, with each group sorted alphabetically. Font size is an indicator of the term's frequency on this page. Click "show all" to see an unabridged version.
Article Outline
This section gives you an overview of the republished Wikipedia page. Click on a header to go to that part of the page.
- Click this icon to move back to the top of the page.
- Gives you the option to stop the outline from tracking your movements.
Find in this article:
Conduct searches using keywords, questions or phrases. Matching passages will be highlighted in the outline. Click on a highlighted section to move to that part of the page.
- Click these arrows to move between search results.
Show Factz
"Show Factz" provides a condensed version of the article, filling in the outline with all the factz (subject-relationship-object) from the article. Clicking on any fact will take you to it's sentence.
Highlighting
This button toggles the highlighting mode. While in highlighting mode you can click on sentences to highlight them (click again to remove the highlight). With sentences highlighted, you can bookmark or share the page's URL and your highlights will stay on the page.
Goodies
Some extra cool stuff we thought you might enjoy
Keyboard Shortcuts
With keyboard shortcuts turned on you can easily and quickly navigate though search results and access commonly used features without taking your hands off your keyboard.
Results Page specific:
- j: down one result
- k: up one result
- o or enter: open current result
- l: next page of results
- h: previous page of results
- p or space: open result miniviewer
- t: switch freebase answer tab
- d: move to freebase dossier
- r: move to article results
- z: move to factz
- s: activate to search box
- esc: deactivate search box
Republished Article specific:
- f: focus search within page form
- n: next search within page result
- p: previous search within page result
- i: enter highlighting mode
- z: toggle Factz display in article outline
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