Search engine optimisation for the Semantic Web era

The World of Search is constantly evolving: those who want to achieve top positions on search engine rankings need to be worried not only of what's happening now, but what the future might bring us.

A good place to start is the Searchology event hosted by Google. Two years ago, the search engine giant introduced Universal Search which Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president , declared would become more important in the future. Since then Universal Search has been integrated with search engine results and is now common rule, integrating results from other Google services such as Video, Maps, images, etc to the general results.

News from Searchology 2009

On the 12th May 2009 the new Search Options panel was introduced during the Searchology event. When searching on Google, you might already have noticed a 'show options' link right before the Google search results, when you click on 'show options' the new Search Options pane. You can now narrow down to the related search results for Videos, Forums or Reviews. A very interesting introduction is the age of the search results, for instance, you might want to see only related results for the past 24 hours, or broaden your search to the past year.

Some very interesting introductions such as the 'Wonder Wheel', which plots a neat graphical representation of related searches and the timeline, which creates a chronological graph. Below is the 'Wonder Wheel' returned when searching for 'hotels in Madrid'.






So there seems to be more information than ever on the world of search, presented in different formats. You might wonder why this is important for you, your business and your website. In short, it is not hugely important today, but will be in the near future. Google has announced the introduction of Rich Snippets where they will be integrated some of that extra information. The Google search result snippet is the bit of text (usually two lines) that appears alongside the link to a website.

Google has been continuously improving snippets, introducing things like sitelinks and lately extending the number of links on the snippets and changing the way sitelinks where displayed. The announcement at Searchology means that snippets will keep changing in the coming months, and websites which are early adopters of microformats or Resource Description Format (RDFa) will benefit from enhanced Google Search Results Snippets.

Semantic Web

The Semantic Web has been the topic of choice during the 18th World Wide Web conference hosted in Madrid last month. The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across different platforms and applications. The W3C Consortium has been pushing towards a 'common language' which will enable data sharing, for instance, Sir Tim Bernes Lee - inventor of the Internet and member of the consortium - uses the example of any electronic device being able to communicate with the web or viceversa. Image switching on the washing machine while you are still at work, so that your laundry can be finished once you arrive to your home.

This, even if it sounds as science fiction today, will be possible in the coming years thanks to the Sematic Web and the introduction of standards such as microformats or RDFa standards Google will adopt.

Should you adopt microformats or RDFa standards?

Google announced that they will be supporting both formats in order to generate the Rich Snippets that will shape the future of search results. If you are building your website now, you can rest assured that both ways will help you. However, due to the fact that RDFa is in fact the preferred standard for W3C Consortium, bigmouthmedia predicts that RDFa will become widely adopted.

Who is using RDFa now?

Website such as MySpace.com, Digg, Slideshare or SearchMonkey, but also government sites like the Whilte House (www.whitehouse.gov)

Conclusion

In order to benefit for these and future changes towards the Semantic Web you need adapt your website to include this information either by adopting microformats or RDFa. This is especially crucial if you are on a build stage as it will be easy to adopt these standards on new website developments. Search engine optimisation will become more complex as search engines will understand better the actual meaning of the webpages presented. Early adopters will benefit from increased search engine exposure and spam will become a thing of the past as search engines become more savvy.

Published by: S. Inarejos

Published 18th May, 2009

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