What is Latent Search?

Bill Rybinski
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Over the past few years, Google made changes to its algorithm to help eliminate keyword stuffing and make search results more user friendly. As the company became more focused on high-quality content, companies with websites needed to develop a latent semantic indexing process to achieve high rankings within Google's search engine results page. Recently, Google announced another major algorithm overhaul that's expected to affect approximately 90 percent of all searches. With technology and the Internet advancing at rapid speeds, algorithm changes don't usually come as a surprise. But the question remains, "How will this algorithm change affect your business?"

According to a recent article on Forbes.com, for your company's website to outshine its competition, your company needs to be everywhere and be connected. You need to develop an intercept marketing plan that revolves around quality content and social media, understand the difference between a latent search and how people currently search for things online, and the purpose behind a latent semantic indexing. Fortunately, businesses have been embracing social networking more and more over the past few years. So, if you've been altering your online business plan to keep up with changes in technology, you don't have much to learn.

Search engines have been slowly transitioning to latent searching, also known as a semantic search. Instead of searching for Internet results based on keywords, a semantic search tries to improve the accuracy of a person's search by understanding the user intent and the contextual meaning of the search term, which provides a better user experience by pointing to high-quality content. Also, when a latent search is performed, the user doesn't have to try to determine what keyword to search for to get the correct results. Instead, the question can be typed as it would be naturally spoken.

While Google will be retaining parts of its old algorithm, the company is starting to focus more on latent semantic indexing, which labels information as an entity to give users concise results. For example, the subject, predicate, and object in the question typed into the search engine will be indexed as one entity to help determine the meaning of the question, and the search engine will look for these entities in the results that are displayed. To be found online, your company needs to focus on latent semantic indexing, which can be done by concentrating on brand development and by creating quality content that uses both primary keywords and relevant keywords, also known as latent semantic indexing keywords or LSI keywords.

The Internet is always changing, and to stay at the top of the search results page, you have to be able to embrace change quickly. By focusing on brand development and promotion, social networking, and creating high-quality content that uses a primary keyword and latent semantic indexing keywords, consumers will be able to find your website.

 

(Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)

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