Oxford SEO Studies Blog

Firstly, apologies for the long delay since our last posting on February 7th.  There have been odd developments here and there  over the past few weeks relevant to our ongoing discussion of the Semantic Web  Twitter’s adoption of semantic mark up using the # key tag is one such development.  Rather than pitting so-called “Real Time” info garnered from Soc Nets against the verifiable authority of RDF schema markup, it looks as though the future of information architecture on the web lies in synthesis of the best elements of both.  Certainly when Social Computing Magazine

starts featuring articles on how to mark up websites for Semantic Search, we are looking beyond obsolete rivalries.  It’s got a handy definition of micro formats :”…a set of simple open data format standards that many are actively developing and implementing for more/better structured and Web micro-content publishing in general”.

But the development that is worth standing up and noting (and indeed, blogging), is Tim Berner-Lee’s latest endorsement of his semantic web project.  We refer to it as his even though it’s ours, only because it derived from his original initiation and call to action  through the W3c consortium 1996.  In  Times Online,  Sir Berner-Lee (something of the knight about him?), refers to the semantic web as the “web of the future” and speculates that it will soon supesede

Something of the Knight About Him?

Google as the search mechanism of choice.  He offers a succinct example of why users will choose the functionality of a semantic search over Google:

“Imagine if two completely separate things–your bank statements and your calendar–spoke the same language and could share information with one another. You could drag one on top of the other and a whole bunch of dots would appear showing you when you spent your money.”

“If you still weren’t sure of where you were when you made a particular transaction, you could then drag your photo album on top of the calendar, and be reminded that you used your credit card at the same time you were taking pictures of your kids at a theme park. So you would know not to claim it as a tax deduction.”

Google’s approach to parsing the Web is based on the statistical analysis of great quantaties of data held on their servers and indexed by their spiders.  That in brief, is both the advantage and limitation of Google.  Soc Nets like Twitter and Facebook  will eventually be superseded by networks that connect all types of things, not just people.    People connected to events, connected to things, connected to records of things.  That is the promise  of the Semantic Web, as well as the means of sifting through all the data in a much more efficient and useful way than a Google SERP.

Google has always been good at adapting and in a sense they are already there.  Peter Norvig, Google’s director of research already mentioned in a recent New Scientist article “In 50 years the scene will be transformed. Instead of typing a few words into a search engine, people will discuss their needs with a digital intermediary, which will offer suggestions and refinements.  The result will not be a list of links, but an annotated report (or a simple conversation) that synthesises the important points, with references to the original literature. People won’t think of “search” as a separate category–it will all be part of living.”

Of course, what he means by a digital intermediary is the Semantic and contextual web.  There scores of  applications already trawling the web in parallel with Google’s  algorithms and delivering their own version of useful search results, interpreting and short cutting for the searcher.  Radar Networks already released  Twine, a personal information manager that uses semantic Web meta formats, such as RDF (Resource Description Framework) and Radar Networks is not alone in  turning the semantic web  into usable applications. Other semantic search applications, such as Freebase, Powerset, Hakia, Blue Organizer, Wikia and Reuters’ Calais, are  gathering momentum and challanging not just traditional SEO, but the traditions of search established by Google itself.   Google isn’t going away but let’s watch while it either adapts or is replaced.

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