Equipped with technologies and formulas, the number-crunching, natural-language search engine WolframAlpha is all set to go live on May 18!

The one-of-its-kind site, featuring computational software Mathematica, is quite a handful – not only does it mull over particular words in a query, but also puts them together to consider their combined meaning; and carries out computations related to the numbers or formulas entered by the users.

According to The New York Times, Stephen Wolfram – the WolframAlpha creator and the developer of Mathematica – considers his site to be an “add-on” for Web searches; and elaborates that the site does not index Web pages like a conventional search engine. Rather, the search engine quantifies ‘artificial intelligence’ and processes a natural-language inquiry against the Wolfram-staff-organized database of facts.

In fact, the WolframAlpha search engine, rather than offering direct competition to Google, Yahoo or Microsoft, would provide the much-needed alternative edge to traditional searching. In the opinion of Scott Testa - Professor of Marketing at St. Joseph's University – “This takes semantic search to the next level. Natural language search ... is the Holy Grail of the industry.”

Talking about his singular search engine, Stephen Wolfram said that WolframAlpha has been developed on the concept of “constant change,” thereby implying that it is essentially “a work in progress” that will continue evolving over time!