In his 2007 article “The Semantic Web & Its Implications on Search Marketing”, published on www.searchenginejournal.com, Michael Marshall claims that the developing phenomenon of personalised web searches is an important step towards the realisation of the Semantic Web, which will require in the end a re-assessment of today’s search marketing strategies.
However, many users of internet services like search engines have never heard of the “Semantic Web” before. In order to better understand the possible implications for the internet user on the one hand, and the internet or search marketer on the other hand, a definition of the term and the underlying technology is necessary.
The Semantic Web is the next development level of today’s World Wide Web, enabling computers to not only process the words on a webpage, but also to comprehend the meaning, or the semantics behind them. This will lead to improved co-operation between computers and people, by expanding the range of tasks in which technology can support human researchers.
This seminal concept was envisioned by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the scientist who is also credited with inventing the WWW. In a 2001 article, Berners-Lee stated that “most of the Web's content today is designed for humans to read, not for computer programs to manipulate meaningfully. […]The Semantic Web will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users.” In order to do so, new technologies are needed that can be implemented in the existing World Wide Web, to set tags on pages to give them a structure, and to interpret these tags from a different work station to understand how the person setting the tags has expressed himself. The computer still doesn't truly "understand" any of this information, but can now manipulate the data much more effectively in ways that are useful and meaningful to the human user.
If properly designed, the Semantic Web will assist the evolution of human knowledge as a whole because it will not only make information more accessible to us, but give us an opportunity to share our way of thinking and comprehending the world with other people.
This sharing of knowledge through the Semantic Web will be, according to Marshall (2007), a revolution in the way personalised web searches are organised and utilised by internet users. Already today, some services are using personalised search based on previous searches with the engine, to provide more meaningful results as the amount of data available continues to grow exponentially. The Semantic Web, however, will give access to the experience and knowledge other users have gained while researching the same or a similar topic, giving more relevant results to the internet user and thus increasing the benefit from the amount of time employed to perform a specific search.
However, the utilisation of Semantic Web technology will not only mean opportunities for the legions of internet users performing searches every day, but also for companies marketing their services and products through search marketing. As the Semantic Web will render searching easier and more meaningful for each user, it will also aid companies to identify their target customer more clearly: who he is, what he needs and WHY he thinks that he needs it, enabling the marketer to target his focus group in totally new and more precise ways.
If Marshall is right, this will lead to a major shift in the way Google, Yahoo! and their competitors are optimising their searches, and are selling these services to companies that are coming up as “sponsored links” and similar for any given topic. Currently, the links are assigned based on a variety of factors, such as keyword matching, keyword density and ranking – with the Semantic Web, it will be possible to understand how the consumers are thinking, to establish “hidden relationships” between topics and to thus exploit marketing in ways not possible with the current level of information available.
The algorithms of the Semantic Web will not only have access to the experience and knowledge of the current user, looking maybe for “holiday packages to Hawaii”, but also to the tags set by all previous users who were searching for the same or similar set of expressions, plus the underlying trends that the Semantic technology is now able to process. This will trigger a range of related searches, performed solely by the computer and will return a whole new range of sponsored links, some not even directly related to the search, but still within the scope of interest of the person performing the search.
However, in order for results to be meaningful, there has to be a high level of security in the way websites and search results are being tagged by internet users, and there lies the biggest challenge for the Semantic Web technology: to prevent malicious, Spam-based, or simply incorrect tagging that will later lead to incorrect results on personalised semantic searches and thus would trigger ineffective marketing, resulting in investments by companies into internet marketing without the desired effects.
Another danger lies hidden in the very advantage of the Semantic Web: following the collective knowledge and experiences of other users may not result in the desired outcome or the correct destination. The fact that everybody thinks something is right doesn’t make it the truth. The possibility that such personalised searches can be based on the wrong perception of others will again lead to ineffective marketing, as the user will have followed his predecessors blindly like a lemming.
In order to be truly useful, the Semantic Web will thus have to overcome these shortcomings, so that search marketing can be used in truly effective ways that were not possible with the World Wide Web. If Spam, misinterpretation, bad tagging and similar factors can be eliminated or at least restricted, then the Semantic Web will be a powerful tool indeed, for the internet user and the internet marketer alike.
Internet marketing will thus keep gaining importance, as it will be addressing consumers in a personalised and appropriate way, regarding their expectations, desires and their way of thinking, segmenting the market down to the level of one. If executed correctly, the Semantic Web will lead marketing to its ultimate incarnation.
