Search engines are fast but demand accurate keyword strategies to target specific information. How much better would it be to be able to pose straightforward questions to a computer and get only a few, precise answers? Similarly, search engines give us lists of results but fail at showing the relationships between the discovered items.

What can be done?

One answer is hinted at by desktop software designed to tell you how information connects to other data.

PersonalBrain is a visualization program that helps you organize what's in your PC or your mind. The product of California-based TheBrain Technologies (www.thebrain.com), the program is an ingenious way not so much to find important items in your work but to view them in a context, surrounded by linkages that shift as you change focus.

So instead of a hierarchy of file folders, each holding important items for an ongoing project, think of the old brainstorming idea where you put down a central concept and then start clustering related things around it. A new job could be surrounded by clients; they in turn could be surrounded by job specifics, maps, letters, anything on your hard disk or the Web. Click on any item and it moves to the center of the screen, the network of relationships shifting to reflect nested connections.

You have to see this work to realize how easy it is and how intuitive it will be for those people who are visually oriented. A free version for ideas and Web sites can be had at the company's Web site, while adding the ability to link to personal documents gets you into the company's commercial offerings, starting at $150.

A test run makes sense, as I've found this mind-mapping software helpful at uncovering relationships I hadn't realized in many writing projects.

A Google or a Yahoo can't show you these kinds of relationships, nor can it take you into the realm of true natural language.

Sure, you can type a question into Google without worrying about keyword strategies and hope for the best, but natural language means working with a search engine that understands meaning and context. Do that well enough and the software can dish up the answers you need, while knowing to avoid the countless pages of irrelevant hits.

Again, the question is relationships. How well can a computer understand them?

Highly anticipated startup Powerset is close to releasing a natural language search engine that has everyone in the trade talking.

The reason for the buzz is the pedigree involved. Powerset licensed a natural language technology from Xerox's fabled Palo Alto Research Center, tapping 30 years of expertise. PARC is legendary for its work in graphical interfaces and networking (Ethernet technology comes from PARC). A breakthrough in natural language could vault Powerset into a truly competitive position.

Keep your eye on www.powerset.com as this story unfolds in the fall.

Indeed, all the major search engines see the promise of such technology and try to emulate it in their own results, but true natural language techniques demand search engines that can understand ambiguity and are able to ferret out the nugget of meaning from a phrase or sentence. Think Star Trek -- you ask the computer a question and it doesn't give you a list of possibilities. It simply answers the question. You can bet Google is watching this carefully.

The other issue that seems to have caught the attention of the search engine giants is privacy, and it's about time. Google now says that 18 months after you run a search, the record of that search will be "anonymized." That means any information that can help identify you or your habits for the benefit of marketers will disappear.

Google also says it will make sure its "cookies" -- the files that tell a Web site you've been there before -- will expire after two years, but only if you don't use Google at all during that time.

Leaving aside the silliness of Google's cookie strategy (not use Google for two years?), the privacy issue has begun to cut deep. Microsoft answered Google by saying it will also purge its search logs after 18 months, and it will store its search records separately from any personally identifiable account information. Customers who want such data combined to get the benefit of personalized ads will have to give their permission to do so.

Add to this Ask.com's decision to offer AskEraser, a service that will store no user information at all, and Yahoo's statement that it will anonymize data after 13 months.

All these companies are responding to a wave of user sentiment that descries the use of search -- a critical Internet utility -- to feed marketers and supply personal information to third parties. With talk of creating a new standard for maintaining search histories, the industry is in the necessary process of purging itself of its own excesses.

Search is getting better and, let's hope, more secure.