Google to Implement Semantic Search

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There is an article in the technology section of today's Wall Street Journal that everyone should read about how Google over the next few months will be changing its search engine to spit out more than a list of links but to implement "semantic search" and gives the following example of the use of semantic search:

People searching for "Lake Tahoe" will see key attributes that the search engine has in its database about the Lake such as its location, altitude, average temperature, etc. while a search today would only yield links to the lake's visitor bureau website, its dedicated page on Wikipedia.com and a link to a map.

What the article did not really answer is how this will affect SEO (I suspect it may push down some results because the top results may now be Google generated data/information) and what can webmasters do to prepare for this change and profit from it and whether or not this will affect how SEO campaigns should be done.

Hope some Warriors can provide guidance on this issue and I look forward to seeing all the new ebooks and WSO's that will likely result from this major change.
#search engine optimization #google #implement #search #semantic
  • http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ch-engine.html
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    • Looks like semantic search is already here.

      Not sure exactly when it happened (I started paying attention sometime last week in response to the Google Penguin Update) but I noticed the following:

      (These are not the actual key phrases but close approximations to illustrate my point).

      If you do a Google search for "how to kill spiders", I see that 6 out of the 10 search results (including the #1 spot) all have have the words that constitute the phrase "how to get rid of spiders" highlighted in bold. (Google highlights your intended search terms in bold.)

      So Google has successfully managed to rank sites that have "get rid of" in the title instead of sites that have "kill" in the title.

      This also includes the Adwords ads above and below the search results.

      What does this mean to SEO? Is it a "good" thing, in the sense that Google wasn't able to find any sites relevant enough with my actual search result, to rank in the top 10 results? Perhaps this should give me a clue that I should also be trying to rank my site for that semantic key phrase as well?

      Any thoughts? Anyone else experience this with the search terms they are trying to rank for?
  • It's a good thing if you meant to just get rid of spiders but what if you actually do want to know how to kill spiders?

    This feature has been around for some time.

    As for the OP about pulling facts straight into the Google search results - that's when business starts to get annoyed and moves their focus (ad spend) elsewhere.
  • It appears that they're going to be serving up content (ie: facts, data, etc.) rather than simply providing links to relevant sites. They want to be a destination for info rather than pointing to the destination.

    This can only mean one thing - less traffic to pages that rank for such data and facts, since searchers won't have to go to the sites and pages listed to get some of the answers they seek.

    We've all seen this coming for a long time. With the release of all those services like Google reader, docs, pages, hosted news, gmail, etc. they've been increasingly doing things for the purpose of user retention. Now they're bringing that to the search results.

    Database type sites that provide simple data about things and places will be hit the hardest with decreases in traffic. Then over time, there will be a cascade effect as they cover more bases with the semantic search algo.

    Google is in a transformation phase, one that will see them sending less and less traffic offsite and keeping it for themselves.

    Paul
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    Google to Implement Semantic Search

    There is an article in the technology section of today's Wall Street Journal that everyone should read about how Google over the next few months will be changing its search engine to spit out more than a list of links but to implement "semantic search" and gives the following example of the use of semantic search: People searching for "Lake Tahoe" will see key attributes that the search engine has in its database about the Lake such as its location, altitude, average temperature, etc. while a search today would only yield links to the lake's visitor bureau website, its dedicated page on Wikipedia.com and a link to a map.