Oxford SEO Studies Blog

It was only a matter of time.  In 1962, Thomas Khun’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions (the work that first defined the notion of paradigms),  clearly delineates the stages a scientific innovation or paradigm shift goes through.  First, there is the stage of overt rejection by the scientific establishment.  In the case of Semantic Search, we are talking about the last 4 years of Google’s ignoring the issue and the past 18 months of pundits thumbing their noses at the development.  Then, as a mounting evidence of data begins to gather momentum, the establishment stops contesting  the premise of the innovation and claims instead that there is no innovation because the premise has already been covered.  In this instance, I refer the reader to our previous blog Google’s VP of Search Products Dismisses Semantic Search from November last year.

Eventually,  the accumulation of supporting data becomes so massive and widely available that the paradigm effectively speaks for itself, or rather speaks through the innovators (some call them visionaries,) that evangelise the new way of thinking and celebrate the shattering of the old paradigm as it’s replaced by the new one.  So it was with Copernicus, for whose paradigm Giordano Bruno suffered to be burnt at the stake

Giordano Bruno contemplating the infinite search potential of semantics.

(unlike his contemporary Galilleo who apparently recanted what he knew to be true at the first sight of the Inquisitions instruments of torture), so it shall be with Semantic Search.  The Semantic Web may not require any such similar blood and fire sacrefice, however the it doubters and sceptics  have just encountered their own Road to Damascus in the form of Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt:

“Wouldn’t it be nice if Google understood the meaning of your phrase but rather just the words that are in the phrase? We’ve made a lot of discoveries in that area that are going to roll out in the next little while.”

Sound familiar?

Schmidt is not talking about universal search, which draws together all Web elements (text,image, sound video etc.) and renders them on a page. Schmidt is talking about semantic search, within the context of XML and RDF schema data taken from semantic networks which  deliver more accurate and relevant search results.

The disambiguation of  search queries has just taken a giant leap forwards.

ReadWrite’s Marshall Kirkpatrick of course, asserted this was already the case on January 9th when he speculated that Google was already slipping semantic search under our noses to disambiguate [what a great word!] search results; they just weren’t telling anyone about it.  To test his hypothesis, Marshall submitted queries like “what is the capital city of Oregon?” and “What is Britney Spears’ mother’s name?”.

“The answers to these and other factual questions are now displayed above natural search results in Google and the information is structured in the traditional subject-predicate-object format, or “triples,” of semantic Web parlance. The answers aren’t found structured that way on the Web pages they come from - Google appears to be parsing the semantic structure from semi or unstructured data”.

Understandable that Google would be a bit cagey about mentioning that they were introducing semantic search results into their index of SERPS, if they were worried about giving any of the promoted semantic search engines undue attention, or credibility.  

But to now have the CEO of the biggest search engine in the known universe allude to Semantic Search as the way forwards for Google, is the coffin nail in the skeptics casket.  If Google’s going that way, then so do we all.  After all, Google knows what its searchers want and what they want is more accurate and relevant answers to their queries.   And Google stays in business by giving its users what they want (while charging advertisers to pitch their ads at their users while they’re getting what they want).

The debate is now officially over, Semantic Search, LSI, RDF-based meta formats are the way forwards if you want your published data to be found on the web.

Kuhn’s final stage in the evolution of paradigms is acceptance.

Once a paradigm is accepted it sticks and becomes the established way of thinking until of course, there begins to emerge another accumulation of data that points at, and eventually shapes, a newer and better way of thinking.  That is when those of us who have been promoting the Semantic Web for few years get to have  radicals and heretics  barbecue.

Burning for a Paradigm

Or maybe we can learn to accept the new with the old and that Search, like everything else, is in a constant state of change.

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