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Next Big Change In Search - Phrase Based Indexing
Since the beginning of search, keyword optimization has been king when it comes to SEO. Whether it was keyword stuffing in the early days, or counting words for the right keyword density, keywords are the obsessive bane or joy of website optimizers. Even less understood advanced concepts such as latent semantic indexing (LSI) still at their core are all about keywords and keyphrases. But in the next few years search engines are going to add a new component that will make SEO even more exact and potentially difficult. Both Google and Yahoo have filed patents concerning “Phrase Based Indexing”. Phrase Based Indexing is an attempt to recognize a relevant set of grouped terms in a section of text which represents a known concept stored in a central concept “dictionary”. What this means is search engines will potentially be able to determine a pages relevancy to a particular keyword without actually containing the keyword. For instance, a page containing the words “brakes”, “engine”, and “cylinders” would be recognized by the search engine as a page that relates to the keyword “cars” and return the page to searchers who search for “cars”. For SEO, not only will this change the way we write and organize our content, it could also blur the obvious relevancy we see today when doing competitive research for high value keywords. Following the previous example, not only could a website rank for a keyword that it doesn’t actually contain, due to other factors (traffic, page rank, etc…), the site could rank higher than many other sites that have a more direct relevancy. Also, such a concept dictionary could reveal common phrases and concepts that are present in advertising and spam websites which aren’t in strictly information sites. Search engines would have much more control over particular classes of sites then they do now, and I doubt it would be a good development for SEO. For more information about this topic, click here to read an in-depth article covering phrase based indexing on seobythesea.com
September 18th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Hi, I found your blog on this new directory of WordPress Blogs at blackhatbootcamp.com/listofwordpressblogs. I dont know how your blog came up, must have been a typo, i duno. Anyways, I just clicked it and here I am. Your blog looks good. Have a nice day. James.