Google Buys Rights to Algorithm Orion© and How to Design For It
Google Buys Rights to Algorithm Orion© and How to Design For It
A 26 year old student of the University of New South Wales located in Australia was working on developing a more accurate search engine algorithm for his PhD that caught the attention of the major players of the search engine realm.
Wisely he put his new algorithm up for patent before the larger search engines started their bidding war. According to The Sydney Morning Herald the new algorithm nicknamed, Orion©, is going to help searches by applying additional searches according to the basic theme of the original search. For example, if you did a search on the ‘American Revolution’ Orion© will do additional searches on terms that relate to the American Revolution such as George Washington, Declaration of Independence, Boston Tea Party, etc. This should dramatically reduce the searches you do when you are trying to find something specific. How is this going to change the web search world?
Theoretically, searches done with an algorithm like this would help the war on filtering spam out of the SERP’s (search engine result pages). With the return results of your searches with the addition of related searches should provide a more human touch to finding what you are looking for. This is done by returning the results of a query (search phrase) displayed immediately in the form of expanded text extracts to help you decide whether to visit that web site or not. Bill Gates of MSN was quoted by Forbes magazine to have said,
“That we need to take the search way beyond how people think of it today. We believe that Orion will do that.”
What kind of web sites would be beneficial to this new idea?
Since the search engine algorithms have been becoming closer and closer to human search it is safe to say that designing web sites for the user instead of the search engines is going to become a big factor in this. It has been going that way for quite awhile now.
When we do our keyword research we put into factor the use of ‘keyword modifiers’ to produce a ‘long tail’ for search. Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine describes ‘Long Tail Search’ marketing. This explains that the extra searches that you rank high with that naturally appear when you have related content. ‘Keyword modifiers’ are search terms that are related to the original search phrase. That is why we hunt down the keyword modifiers of a search phrase to produce this long tail effect. With this new algorithm it looks like it was designed especially for that!
Larger web sites that have separate pages devoted to keyword modifiers should do well with such a search engine. Take for instance a web design company called The Internet Presence. Keyword modifiers for this company would be web design, web hosting, domain name registration, SSL certificates, and more. If you went to www.theinternetpresence.com you will find that it has separate pages related to each of these keyword modifiers. With the proper use of internal linking and great useful content (not copied from somewhere else) you should be able to do well with this algorithm.
Google has always aspired to bring its search engine to this point. And has to a certain degree, because The Internet Presence was only optimized for one phrase but it ranks high in several phrases due to the long tail effect. Google’s acquisition of this new algorithm will help them go down that road further.
In short I foresee smaller spammy web sites leaving the searches and informational, helpful larger sites entering it.
So this means . . .
* Concentrate on keeping your web sites designed for the user in mind * Keep those keyword modifiers in mind when building your site * Design your site to be ‘Long Tail’ friendly * Make sure that sentences surrounding your keyword phrases are descriptive because they will determine whether someone visits your web site from this new search idea * Continue to receive great links from related sources * And above all make your web site informational and useful
Michael Rock (Search Engine Optimization Specialist )
Web Ranking Consultants Web Development Contractor
Michael Rock is a teacher, author, and web designer of SEO (search engine optimization). He is also the founder of The Internet Presence which offers web development services and Web Ranking Consultants which offers SEO consultation and services. Copyright © Michael Rock Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. (You have permission to copy this article as long as it remains intact with the author's byline)
About the Author
The owner of this registered company has over twenty years experience with DOS, windows business applications, numerous programming languages, artistic development, and web design. Other areas of interest include web marketing, web promoting, and business marketing and development. After the persuasion of those praising his work, he decided to go into business himself and highly suggests everyone else to do the same.
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