What is SEMANTIC SEARCH and why should you care?

I talk to many folks about a wide variety of topics and enjoy just discussing random issues with random folks on the street, and use the insights from these conversations to understand how the public think and what is important to folks in various different work environments,  focusing specifically on the online marketing issues that unfold when evaluating what has been discussed.

The fact that I talk to many folks about marketing, in all its forms also allows me to have an understanding of how online marketing issues which are  being promoted by so called online marketing experts, and folks who are knowledgeable within the online marketing industry  are not taking the Google Hummingbird algorithm into account.

Google Humming Bird algorithm has been around very close to three years now, (introduced August / September 2013)  but many online marketing folks still do not know what this is and have no clues as to how Google humming Bird algorithm  impacts on search results within the Google search engine.

Since the Introduction of the Google Humming Bird algorithm in August / September 2013 there have been many folks using the click bait technique of saying that a specific SEO (Search Engine Optimization) technique such as the use of keywords or page titles in the HEAD section of an HTML document is dead and no longer relevant to search engines as a tool, to evaluate the content of your page for a match to a search query.  See this post by Garenne Bigby   discussing the death of SEO

This has lead to the public believing that these issues, techniques and tactics are no longer used by Google to evaluate the context  and intentions of your online content.  It has thus come about that the public, and most online marketing folks, now ignore and neglect to use these very valuable SEO (Search Engine Optimization)  tools, with the vast majority of folks who make use of the social media as an online marketing base not even knowing of the existence of the Google Humming Bird algorithm

I have written about the impacts and some issues associated with Google Humming Bird algorithm before and here are a few links to posts discussing #googlehummingbird 

These posts were selected randomly from an internal search of this blog and you may get the full list by typing "google humming bird" into the internal search engine of this blog.

http://4ubrand.blogspot.co.za/p/blog-page.html
http://4ubrand.blogspot.co.za/2015_09_01_archive.html
http://4ubrand.blogspot.co.za/2016/06/fufism-as-marketing-philosophy-helps.html

Now to answer the question I posed "what is SEMANTIC SEARCH and why should I care"  I look at it from this angle....

SEMANTIC SEARCH within the context of Google search  is basically (at least in my mind) the complete operational output of the Google Humming Bird algorithm, where Google is trying to match the intent of a search query with the intent of an online document. Semantic search thus involves many new concepts that the old keyword style search (Pre-Google Humming Bird) could not achieve

Below is a very limited list of things that are addressed within the context of Google Humming Bird algorithm, which Google uses to improve the quality of their search results also known as #SERP or Search Engine Results Pages. Remember that the introduction of the Google Humming Bird Algorithm signaled the change from exclusively using strings, to using strings, things, and the connections between strings, things, individual identifiable  digital entities and   the understanding of the content as well as context and semantics of an online document, and includes  a host of new indicators such as but not limited to

• the semantic footprint of the online document in question
•  author credibility and the semantic footprints of identifiable contributors to the online document in question.
•  Semantic footprint and credibility of the publisher of the document in question
• identifiable  Social interactions within the public social media arena, linking to the document in question, up to a few network levels past the original posts within the social media space,
•  The semantic footprint of identifiable and verifiable online  documents which have links pointing to the online document in question.
• The semantic footprints of other online documents linked to from the online document in question  
• The semantic footprints of digital entities mentioned within the HEADER section in the HTML data of a text document or the EXIF data of a non text document if it exists
• Semantic connections between META DATA in the HEAD section of HTML documents and the perceived (Googles perspective) purpose, intent, aims and objectives of the online document in question   making the following list of meta data components important from an SEO perspective
•  page titles
• page descriptions
• keyword lists
• author  / contributors
• publisher  / document hosts
• language
• expiry date when applicable

There are a vast number of new things that search engines are  looking at today, that were not considered pre-Google Humming Bird algorithm, and most folks within the online marketing industry  are oblivious to these, even though they are using many of them very regularly. Most of these issues link back to the SEMANTICS of  the search query and the  SEMANTICS of the individual online documents within the SERP's or Search Engine Results Pages

from the perspectives of the collective semantics of all the components of the online document in question 

Now to answer the why should I care part, one needs a true description of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)    From a #FUFISM perspective SEO is ALL the work done to ensure that your intended target market audience find  your online content when searching for semantically related issues online, and then actually consume that content, and take your desired CTA (Call To Action) seriously then follow through by completing that specific stage in your  audience activity funnel, sales funnel or conversion funnel.

It thus follows that having an elementary understanding of SEMANTIC SEARCH  will be very advantageous for your online marketing success, so you really do need to get to grips with SEMANTIC SEARCH and the associated issues of Google Humming Bird Algorithm

Enjoy the rest of your day and many thanx for reading my post.

#frankie2socks