In the Official Google Blog today, Steve Baker gives some (frankly unusual) insight
into how it is Google’s algorithms deal with semantics, specifically
synonyms. As he points out in his post, it’s kind of funny and amazing
what computers are good at, and what they’re not:
An irony of computer science is that tasks humans
struggle with can be performed easily by computer programs, but tasks
humans can perform effortlessly remain difficult for computers. We can
write a computer program to beat the very best human chess players, but
we can’t write a program to identify objects in a photo or understand a
sentence with anywhere near the precision of even a child.
But because Google’s primary directive is to produce search results
most relevant to the query you typed into the search box, it must at
least strive to “get†synonyms. (Just as a refresher, a synonym is a
word that means exactly or substantially the same thing as another –
for example, “photo†is a synonym for “pictureâ€, so if you’re looking
for “photo editing software†Google should also provide keyword matches
for “picture editing softwareâ€.)
And by Google’s own reckoning, they’re doing a pretty good job of it, even if it is really, really hard to do:
…our measurements show that synonyms affect 70 percent
of user searches across the more than 100 languages Google supports. We
took a set of these queries and analyzed how precise the synonyms were,
and were happy with the results: For every 50 queries where synonyms
significantly improved the search results, we had only one truly bad synonym.
According to Baker, they’ve changed the way search results are
displayed to not only bold the actual keyword matches in the results,
but also the synonyms for the keyword matches (i.e., “photos†as well
as “pictures†will be bolded even if you only typed “photos†in your
search query.) Though the system does this where it has confidence
there’s a true match, it will likely do this in a majority of the cases.
So what’s the SEO impacts of Google’s improving synonym-matching system?
Once again, it boils down to understanding how your customers
naturally search for the products or services you provide. If it’s
reasonable for a customer to use “pictures†and “photos†in a search
related to what you promote on your website, then it’s important that
your site’s content reflects both these keywords.
Don’t conclude, however, that you should just stuff your site’s
content – willy-nilly – with all the keywords and their synonyms you
can think of. It’s very important that you use keywords, their
variants and their synonyms in a natural and readable way.
For instance, in search marketing, it’s appropriate to refer to SEO
as “natural search optimization†and “organic search optimizationâ€.
So, in our website, we say:
“For those interested in search engine optimization
(SEO), the Yield Web Marketing Suite includes a natural (or organic)
search optimizer to improve your website’s ranking in search results
pages on Google, Yahoo and Bing.â€
In this example, Google’s crawlers are able to index that we refer
(in a grammatically normal way) to both natural and organic search
synonymously. No matter which way someone may choose to seek out a
system like ours – using “SEOâ€, “search engine optimizationâ€, “natural
search†or “organic search†– we’ve ensured our site can rank as high
as possible in the results sets.
Spend some time thinking about how your customers search for what it
is you offer. If possible, watch how people conduct searches – over
their shoulders, for instance. You’ll quickly see people interested in
the same thing will use many different keywords and phrases in order to
get to a common destination on the Web. This is normal.
Adapt your website and its content with this reality in mind, and
you’ll show up in search results no matter how folks choose to get
there!
