Semantic Search Might Become Google's Biggest Shift

The next major change in Google search is on the horizon. Google's Amit Singhal has been talking about Google's switch to semantic search technology which will soon be implemented to supplement Google's current keyword search system.

Google has been amassing a huge database of 200 million entities over the last couple years, and each of these entities is interconnected in a huge Web of associations. So instead of your words just being keywords - Google will recognize the words as entities that are persons, places, or things.

For example when you search for the Empire State Building, Google will know that you're searching for a building, that it's in New York City, where in the city it is, how tall it is, etc. It can then display the answer to a specific query directly to you in the search results instead of showing you a list of sites to search through to get that information.

Why does Google want to get more accurate at answering questions? Well it might have something to do with Apple's Siri. Google is reportedly working on their own version of Siri called Google Assistant that will most likely be released on Android devices.

On top of just having the answer to a question in the results, this change will help Google give even more relevant results to users. Previously Google has just hoped that when you search they can take your keywords and give you what you're looking for, but this will give them a better degree of certainty. This of course will lead to more money in Google's pocket since ads should become more relevant as well.

It's difficult to pin down what kind of effect this will have on the SEO world. Some have speculated that with Google feeding you information, people who depend on the search and discovery of their ads will take a hit because people will spend less time browsing the results. However, since ads will be more relevant you could see a higher click rate, especially since there could be fewer ads shown if less relevant ads are pruned from the results.

It's estimated that this change towards the future of search will affect 10% to 20% of results, which would easily be one of the biggest changes in Google history. And sinc...