Earlier this month Microsoft launched their updated search engine named Bing. Search startup Hakia claims they invented "categorized search".Hakia is a semantic search engine which uses partial human filtered results to help get users closer to the result they are seeking. Many of the search results on Hakia use categories which the company says they invented in 2007.

Hakia provides "galleries" for a variety of topics (here's the result for diabetes). In the diabetes example, the gallery result includes a wide variety of categories instead of the typical "10 blue links" like Google provides. The gallery offers multiple categories of results in an attempt to help the user find what they are looking for.

Hakia COO Melek Pulatkonak posted on the company blog last week about the Bing Launch. The title of the blog post says it all, "inspired by hakia, Bing introduces categorized search". Melek notes, "...It was then no surprise when Microsoft invited us to show them the inner workings of the hakia Galleries in July 2008- shortly after their acquisition of Powerset. But it was a huge surprise to recently find out that Microsoft introduced categorized search in Bing. Today we checked out the Bing preview and compared the Bing's categorized search feature to its inspiration, hakia Galleries."

The blog post goes on to compare search results on Bing and Hakia using a few different terms. It's important to note that on both engines the categories are limited to popular terms. Searches that don't have categories or galleries result in a typical list of links.

As a New York-based startup, I've followed Hakia over the past couple of years. The team is producing some interesting technology. My only issue with the company has been the lack of marketing -- their blog post about Bing shows that maybe the company is ready to come out of their shell.