Web 3.0 and SEO - The Semantic Web
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If the phrase “semantic web” makes your eyes glaze over or causes you to scratch your head, you can be forgiven; I didn’t really get it myself until I read a recent article in the New York Times by John Markoff titled “Entrepreneurs See a Web Guided by Common Sense.” Blogger Tim Finin critiqued that article, perhaps a little unfairly, as being “pretty much free from content from a technology perspective. The Semantic Web is mentioned, but almost in passing, for example.” Markoff was trying to get readers to understand the larger concepts of what the technology would do and how it would change people’s lives; while the nuts and bolts of how this is done are important, that wasn’t the point.
So what is the semantic web? Think of it as the Internet growing a brain, or developing artificial intelligence. The most rudimentary example of this is how Google works when you search on keywords, and especially when you give it a more advanced query such as bass –guitars, which literally translates to “find me all the documents that mention bass but not guitars.” The ideal search engine would just know that you mean bass the fish, not bass guitars.
But researchers want to make the semantic web much more sophisticated than that; they want it to actually be able to reason, and therefore give answers to much more complicated queries. It wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago, because we didn’t have the computing power to fully scour the web. As I understand it, we still don’t, quite, but we’re definitely getting there; we’re able to scan a large enough pool of information for computers to “think” about (or process through many multiple algorithms).
What does it mean to be able to search with machine-driven agents that can reason? To use the example Markoff gives, scientists hope one day that users will be able to ask questions like “I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $3,000. Oh and I have an 11-year-old child.” You can ask that now, of course, but you won’t get a meaningful answer in that form; you’ll have to do the work yourself. Researchers want a search agent to be able to answer that question with a complete, meticulously planned vacation package that rivals what a human travel agent can now put together.
What does this mean for SEO? It’s hard to say. Some versions of the semantic web call for everyone to have their own specialized “agents” that scour the web, looking out for their user’s interests. That’s a significant change to the concept of a search engine, but we can already see some inklings of it with vertical search engines, social search engines, and even the custom search engines users create with Google’s new service.
As for intelligence, programs are already able to recognize certain things and what they mean –- even if it is something as simple as “this email is newer than that one, so I should put it closer to the top of this queue.” On a more advanced level, smart webcams can detect intruders and send alerts when they spot anything amiss. In this kind of world, the basics of SEO are still important (focus the content, have lots of content, have lots of FRESH content, and make sure it’s useful) –- perhaps even more important, because search agents will understand every word you write, in context. They will also understand every word your reviewers and consumers (disgruntled or otherwise) write too. After all, the social aspects, interaction, and involvement that characterized Web 2.0 aren’t simply going to go away with Web 3.0.
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