Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

| This News Blog is dedicated to bringing news, information and innovations targeting the Search Engine Optimisation industry.

Search - The Next Generation

We may not yet be able to demonstrate true artificial intelligence (AI), as envisaged by the films of Steven Spielberg or the novels of Isaac Asimov, but the next generation of search engines could take us a step closer.

For much of the past two decades, typing words into a box on a search engine webpage has presented us with thousands of pages containing those key words but its not always the most relevant that find their way to the top of the list.

Although the system has been adequate, it is far from perfect and this is because, at present, computers think very differently from human beings.

Whilst computers interpret words and language literally, people view the world in terms of associations.
 
This is often demonstrated with the sentence, "I saw a bird with a telescope". Whilst humans instantly know it was you not the bird that was using the telescope computers take the phrase literally and see it the other way around.
 
It is this flaw that has let existing search engines down and now the race is on to develop a system that can understand the precise meaning or true intent of questions or phrases, otherwise known as semantic search engines.

At the forefront of this research is Kosmix, one of a new batch of search engines trying to incorporate human understanding into its complex mathematical computations. Anand Rajaraman, co-founder of Kosmix, is reported as saying the site's goal is to encourage a kind of serendipity by displaying information in a visual way.

Meanwhile Bing is the latest reincarnation of Windows Live Search and MSN Search (which have never been as popular as Yahoo or Google) to help give it an edge Microsoft bought semantic search company Powerset that uses updated methods to produce their results. But Scott Prevost from Powerset believes that despite advances, the problems of natural language are not even close to being solved.

In the meantime attention is shifting to making search engines more accessible- taking them away from the desktop and into our car or pocket. Until true AI becomes a reality, and this could be at least a decade away, mobile web browsers are seeing the most investment from search engine companies.

A recent survey in the US showed the number of search apps downloaded to mobile phones in the past year has doubled.

What's more, as around a third of searches are now done using a GPS enabled mobile phones, the race is on to make best use of the ability to provide a constant stream of updated information.

But typing in a search request while on the go, especially behind the wheel of a car, can be dangerous and illegal, which has renewed interest in developing better voice recognition applications.

This too will require improvements to semantic software and although still in its infancy, many believe this research will lead to a more powerful internet.

In a recent interview with the BBC, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, believes the breakthrough will come as a result of the ability to make connections.

He explained that progress is made when somebody has the creativity to look at a piece of data that was put there for one reason and realises that they can connect it with something else.

Now the race is on between the established players and the young start-ups to take search to the next level by making it highly personalized, intuitive and more integrated into our lives.
 
Of course on the flip side the technology will have a significant impact on the process of search engine optimisation. This is because search engines currently make decisions about search relevancy from a combination of site content and inbound links.
 
Optimisation for semantics will bring in technology that will incorporate not only relevancy defined by related keyphrases and the target sites inherent relevancy but also the relevancy of its network.

Comment:

Become a Fan on Facebook

Follow Matt on Twitter