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Grumpus · 01-22-2004, 07:55 AM

Hiya Gang,

Actually, this is a good example of Google's Applied Semantics Technology in action. The article I linked to describes "Stemming" as a separate function, but the way stemming is working in Google, it appears (to me anyway) that it's not really stemming, but rather a side effect of the semantics engine.

Bear in mind that this whole thing is pretty new to Google and, as such, the quality and effectiveness of it is a bit questionable sometimes. You can be pretty sure that they're hard at work improving it though.

For those of you who are more advanced in your understanding of how SEO works, here's a paper on the concepts of "The Semantic Web". It's not an easy read, by any stretch and for most, it'll probably be over your head. In a nutshell, Semantics is a means of analyzing the relationships between words and phrases as they appear in natural language. It's a way of determining that when I type "Paris Hilton rates" I'm looking for information about a hotel in France and if I type "Paris Hilton tapes" I'm looking for naked pictures of the hot blonde from that FOX TV show.

Let's look at those terms, now.

In this case, Google has decided that people who type "whiplash injury" are looking for something different than those who type in "whiplash injuries". Both sets of results contain similar pages (and many of the same pages), but they are weighted somewhat differently.

The "injury" set of listings is giving me more results that answer the statement "I have a whiplash injury". There are more "informational" and "health" related sites in this set.

The "injuries" set of listings addresses this statement: "I need someone who specializes in whiplash injuries." This list is showing more "legal" and "commercial" type sites.

So, in this example, we can see that Google has determined (through natural occurances of the terms throughout the web) that "whiplash injury" is more personal (it's about me, I need help with my whiplash injury) and that "whiplash injuries" is more compensational (it's about who specializes in dealing with whiplash injuries.)

As I said, you'll still see opposite examples across the two terms, but the results are definitely skewed toward each general "meaning" that I've outlined. I make no claims about whether Google has come to the proper conclusions, here, I'm just showing you the conclusions they've come to with their fancy new toy from Applied Semantics.

G.

01-22-2004, 07:55 AM	#4 (permalink)
Grumpus Inactive Join Date: 01-21-04 Posts: 85 iTrader: 0 / 0% Latest Blog: None	Hiya Gang, Actually, this is a good example of Google's Applied Semantics Technology in action. The article I linked to describes "Stemming" as a separate function, but the way stemming is working in Google, it appears (to me anyway) that it's not really stemming, but rather a side effect of the semantics engine. Bear in mind that this whole thing is pretty new to Google and, as such, the quality and effectiveness of it is a bit questionable sometimes. You can be pretty sure that they're hard at work improving it though. For those of you who are more advanced in your understanding of how SEO works, here's a paper on the concepts of "The Semantic Web". It's not an easy read, by any stretch and for most, it'll probably be over your head. In a nutshell, Semantics is a means of analyzing the relationships between words and phrases as they appear in natural language. It's a way of determining that when I type "Paris Hilton rates" I'm looking for information about a hotel in France and if I type "Paris Hilton tapes" I'm looking for naked pictures of the hot blonde from that FOX TV show. Let's look at those terms, now. In this case, Google has decided that people who type "whiplash injury" are looking for something different than those who type in "whiplash injuries". Both sets of results contain similar pages (and many of the same pages), but they are weighted somewhat differently. The "injury" set of listings is giving me more results that answer the statement "I have a whiplash injury". There are more "informational" and "health" related sites in this set. The "injuries" set of listings addresses this statement: "I need someone who specializes in whiplash injuries." This list is showing more "legal" and "commercial" type sites. So, in this example, we can see that Google has determined (through natural occurances of the terms throughout the web) that "whiplash injury" is more personal (it's about me, I need help with my whiplash injury) and that "whiplash injuries" is more compensational (it's about who specializes in dealing with whiplash injuries.) As I said, you'll still see opposite examples across the two terms, but the results are definitely skewed toward each general "meaning" that I've outlined. I make no claims about whether Google has come to the proper conclusions, here, I'm just showing you the conclusions they've come to with their fancy new toy from Applied Semantics. G.