Papers & Articles
11/08/2008 | Future Search Intelligence Replaces Matches
Search Engines have ruled the way we browse the web since use of the internet exploded back in the nineties. Web designers and marketers have tried dubious methods in order to achieve the elusive top rankings in Google, Yahoo, et al. The major search engines have held us all in bondage to their mysterious algorithms; what Google says goes. You upset Google at your peril. Sites can get blacklisted from the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) if the search engines suspect that you may be using illicit methods in order to gain a top listing.
The majority of law-abiding web agencies behave ethically when marketing clients' websites. But with the new generation of semantic search results, based on how words relate to each other as opposed to exact matches, it will be harder than ever to get your site noticed. Keywords and Meta tags are not going to have anywhere near the impact they currently enjoy in search engine optimization. Search engines will become more sophisticated in their ability to "understand meaning,"
according to Barney Pell, CEO of Powerset, who specialise in applying natural language processing to search. Powerset was recently acquired by Microsoft, in a bid to try to compete with Google, who are at present the leading search engine by a country mile.
Google themselves have recently announced a number of developments to stay ahead of the field. Google's business search hardware, Google Search Appliance (GSA) was this week upgraded to handle 10 million documents from the previous maximum of 3 million.
Enterprise Search is a fast growing market. As the number of files held on business servers grows exponentially, many companies are now using search interfaces to find relevant documents in their archives. Autonomy and Fast are two of the major players in Enterprise Search who face increasingly heavy competition from the mega search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
Shared search and queryless search are also being further developed. As the data centres become more sophisticated in how they handle searches, marketers must strive to find new, ethical methods of ensuring their sites are found by potential customers.
back to main newsUsing White Hat Media was one of the best business decisions we made. Because of their long experience of the web, we're in safe hands. Their site development skills marketing expertise is second to none. I'd recommend them to any business that is looking for real results from their web budget.
