Semantic Search and Old Style Marketing
January 27, 2017
I read “It Used to Be So Easy to Get Google to Love You Now Not So Much.” I find it amusing that marketing methods which are ineffectual are still used in Google’s mobile oriented, buy-ad world. Here’s a great example from a small company trying to become a headliner.
Years ago I worked on a US government project. I developed a system which manipulated certain Web search systems’ indexing. It seems to me that one outfit has tried to emulate the DNA of my method. You can see the example of content marketing which is designed to polish a halo for a company involved in indexing. Yep, I know indexing is not exactly what makes the venture capitalists’ heart pound. But indexing has a long tradition of being
- Expensive
- Labor intensive if one wants to deliver precision and recall in search results
- Intellectually demanding, particularly when smart software goes off the rails so often
- Tough to make magnetic.
The write up “Searching with Semantic Technology” summarizes a write up in a “thought leader” publication. There is a parental reminder to remember how important indexing is. There is a concluding statement which explains that natural language processing plays a role in delivering search results. The buzzword “semantic” is repeated.
The only hitch in the git along is that the effort to trigger a Web search system using this abstract, keyword, and allegedly critical comment is that it is old and no longer works very well.
Why? Let me point out:
- Queries come from mobile device users. Some topics don’t lend themselves to mobile methods. It follows that methods based in whole or in part on the methods I developed and explained in my articles over the years are a bit like multiple Xerox copies of an original document. Faded and often useless.
- The jargon problem plagues those with niche capabilities. I pointed out in my cacaphone write up and compilation of buzzwords that most folks don’t have a clue what words mean. A good example is “semantic,” a term which has been devalued and applied to everything from marketing search engines to metasearch engines and more.
- The Web indexing systems have shifted over the years from reliance of a handful of proven indexing methods to wrappers of code which act “smart.” Results lists are essentially unpredictable today. Spoofing with words is a bit like shooting a handgun at the ocean in the hope of killing a fish.
For more information on an old system which doesn’t work very well anymore, navigate to www.augmentext.com. For more examples of marketing material which uses an ineffectual method to add razzle dazzle to a capability which is at best boring and more often of minimal interest, read the blog which serves as the home to this “insight.”
Kenny Toth, January 27, 2017
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
