Talk:Selection-based search

Scope, definition and sourcing problems

I added cleanup and synthesis tags because the article appears to use "selection-based search" for several substantially different concepts without establishing that reliable sources treat them as one coherent category.

There seems to be an internal problem with the definition. At its broadest, the article describes selection-based search simply as selecting text and invoking a search on it. The Operation section even acknowledges that some systems merely provide links to ordinary search engines. Such a system may do little more than pass the selected text to Google, Yahoo, or another search service.

However, the same section also makes the general statement that "selection-based search systems create what is known as a semantic database of trained terms", and describes these systems as categorizing the selected text, querying several heterogeneous online services, choosing services according to the semantic type of the selection, and compiling the results.

Those are much more specific architectural claims and do not follow from the broad definition above. A basic "search for selected text" feature does not necessarily perform semantic categorization, create a semantic database, search multiple services, or aggregate results.

The examples also appear to span substantially different technologies and interaction patterns: selected-text web search, Internet Explorer Accelerators, Spotlight-style local search, semantic entity recognition and service routing, federated/metasearch, and floating result interfaces.

This raises the possibility that the article has combined material from sources which use "selection-based search" in different senses, producing a single category broader than the sources themselves support.

A source-by-source review seems necessary to determine:

• which sources actually use the term "selection-based search";
• what each source means by the term;
• which claimed features are supported by which sources;
• whether reliable sources themselves group these different systems together;
• whether some material should be removed, split, merged elsewhere, or the article substantially redefined.

This appears to require substantial restructuring rather than ordinary copyediting. ~2026-51702-31 (talk) 04:45, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

RfC on scope and definition of selection-based search

Do reliable sources support treating the systems and features currently described in this article as a single coherent concept called "selection-based search"? Hashbrownie123 (talk) 05:21, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

The concern is described in the preceding section, Scope, definition and sourcing problems. In particular, the article describes both very simple selected-text searching, which may merely pass selected text to an ordinary search engine, and much more specific systems involving semantic categorization, multiple heterogeneous services, service routing, aggregation, and particular result interfaces. It is unclear whether reliable sources themselves establish these as characteristics of one coherent concept or whether the article has combined different uses of the term. Hashbrownie123 (talk) 05:21, 26 September 2026 (UTC)