Loading ...Although there is no clear definition of semantics at this point, semantic technology and how it impacts search is sparking a lot of conversation of late. In the past, the search industry has focused primarily on keywords, but now, everyone wants to dig deeper and find the true meaning, or the semantics, behind various actions.
All the search engines have recently stepped up their efforts with semantic search and hope to better understand each user’s intent. For example, if a user searches for “cougar” are they looking for an animal, a car, or a TV series? Semantic technology has potential to provide a better understanding of that intent.
While many questions pertaining to semantics remain, one certainty that Dana Todd of Newsforce points out is that semantics go beyond keywords and produce new and intriguing data layers to calculate.
Where do you think semantics will take us moving forward? Do you have concerns about semantic search?
Good piece on semantic search. Nice to see more drilling down to move beyond simple meaning to actual intent. Will be interesting to see how this issue affects the futures of Bing and Google as well as the SEO and design of average websites.
Dana makes the semantic topic sound interesting! We all had big hopes for LSI a few years back but Google pretty well dropped it because they couldn’t do a good job of “reading between the lines.” They were and still are obsessed with spam and couldn’t find a way integrate semantic analysis into the algorithm. Google acquired Applied Semantics in 2003 http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/applied.html however nothing really evolved out of that. Perhaps Matt Cutts should comment on why semantic analysis isn’t a bigger part of the algorithm? Mike made reference to real time search and perhaps with the demands of real time search quality, semantics will have to be integrated to generate quality search results out of what is now poor quality results from the real time search engines. I’d like Dana to dig down and discuss more of semantic indexing and the weighting of such factors as LSI could finally be forced into action in Google search indexing.
How to throw technology into something to completely destroy it.
So if I understand correctly, now they are trying to figure out a way to read your mind (intent) so they can supply their interpretation of what you should be looking for in search. Egads, no wonder Google dropped this one. This is a disaster waiting to happen.
If you take out the “technology” component and really understand what keyword “semantics” is then you are heading in the correct direction. We all search for things based on our cultural biases. Understanding the culture of your specific buyer determines the words you are required to target. No technology required. Psychology maybe, Linguistics maybe, common sense maybe, but nooo technology on the search level. Leave it to the webmasters to do their own semantic targeting. This is the job of the SEO.
Nice. Hope that users will start understanding semantics and its Impact on SEO
Good piece on semantic search. Nice to see more drilling down to move beyond simple meaning to actual intent. Will be interesting to see how this issue affects the futures of Bing and Google as well as the SEO and design of average websites.