Web 3.0 Search Aligning with Data

The announcement by Yahoo! Search of an open search ecosystem on March 13 is a step in the direction of search aligning with data

While there has been remarkable progress made toward understanding the semantics of web content, the benefits of a data web have not reached the mainstream consumer. Without a killer semantic web app for consumers, site owners have been reluctant to support standards like RDF, or even microformats. We believe that app can be web search.

By supporting semantic web standards, Yahoo! Search and site owners can bring a far richer and more useful search experience to consumers.

It's a step in the right direction. Third party developers will be able to work on the open search platform. An open system holds greater promise for site-owners to help make search results listings much more relevant for the people who are searching.

We've just scratched the surface on search. In a recent article on Times Online, Tim Bernes-Lee himself talked about how the next generation of Web technology will help create a seamless web of all the data in your life. A passionate conversation ensued in the comments - 151 of them. Bye bye Google, hello semantic Web.

The semantic web is the term used by the computer and internet industry to describe the next phase of the web's development, and essentially involves building web-based connectivity into any piece of data — not just a web page — so that it can "communicate" with other information.

"At the moment, people are very excited about all these connections being made between people — for obvious reasons, because people are important — but I think after a while people will realise that there are many other things you can connect to via the web."

I for one am very fond of connections made between people. And agree with Mr. Bernes-Lee on the security risks we'll need to watch for as more and more information moves online. Perhaps we could infuse the term authority with the connotation that a community would give it - permission to contribute where you can, communicate when you can, and participate what you can [hat tip to Chris Brogan for this part of the conversation].

Last year I talked about Artificial Intelligence Agents as Discovery Channels. Marketing Technologist Scott Brinker asks: "This seems like it will herald the next generation of SEO. Call it SEO++ (because it is sort of object-oriented)?" How about it? Marketing and the semantic Web. This is pretty big news.

In the words of Avinash Kaushik, Context is King, Baby! Go Get Your Own.

Comments

[Scott Brinker]

Hi, Valeria -- thanks for the link!

I do think this is really big news, one of those inflection points such as the transition from radio to TV. For the past 10 years of search engine marketing, it's been all about single-dimensional text and the links between different pockets of text. (Okay, with a few twists for photos, videos, and maps.) Now we're talking about multi-dimensional structured data -- and very intriguing ideas about how it may be presented in the flow of a user's search experience.

I'm sure momentum will really take off once Yahoo! releases this and people can see it action. And hopefully Google will follow suit. The potential of an explosion in search innovation over the next 12-24 months is incredibly exciting and full of opportunities for marketers to differentiate themselves in the search medium.

SEO++ is going to be a real trip!

[Valeria Maltoni]

Scott:

I found so many good ideas at your blog - it was an added bonus of researching the material for the post. See? The power of making intelligent and relevant comments.

I've had this vie of the 3-D Web for a while, with the 3rd D as the depth given by links. As for search, fortune has it that I have a colleague at work who gets it in spades. She's a tech-geek who understands marketing. We're a good combo.

[John Johansen]

Nice post Valeria. One of the common complaints about new ways the Internet is being used is that they are hard to search. As users generate and classify more of their own content, trying to sort it all based on keywords becomes an almost absurd proposition.

Yahoo! spearheading something like this right now also seems to be a strategic move on their part to make their search business look less (or more?) attractive as part of an acquisition since it breaks the status quo.

I'm very interested to see what this does to SEO, and if people start to change their practices to be more relevant to Yahoo!

[Valeria Maltoni]

John:

Keywords do not take context (and for that matter not even content) into consideration. Let's take my favorite example: Google. It rates the flogs that scrape and use my content to gain ranking in the same manner as they rank my blog. Why? No context.

I am applauding the move by Yahoo!Search and will follow its progress. Breaking the status quo is easier to do for incumbents while the market leader sits there fat and happy. Competition is very good for us.

And then there is the conversation on how people have been trained to write for Google and not for their readers and customers. I wrote about it in a post a couple of weeks back. SEO indeed!