OntoSearch

What Is Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)?

It would be easier to state what Laten Semantic Indexing is not than what it is. Even a mathematician would find it extremely difficult to preach the concept of Laten Semantic Indexing, which is also sometimes known as latent semantic analysis, to any normal person in just a few words.

“The term semantics is applied to the science and study of meaning in language, and the meaning of characters, character strings and words. Not just the language and words themselves, but the true meaning being conveyed in the context in which they are being used.”

In 2002 a company called Applied Semantics, an innovator in the use of semantics in text processing, launched a program known as AdSense, which was a form of contextual advertising whereby adverts were placed on website pages which contained text that was relevant to the subject of the adverts.

Google and Semantics

The matching up of text and adverts was carried out by software in the form of mathematical formula known as algorithms. It was claimed that these formula used semantics to analyze the meaning of the text within the web page. In fact, what it initially seemed to do was to match keywords within the page with keywords used in the adverts, though some further interpretation of meaning was evident in the way that some relevant adverts were correctly placed without containing the same keyword character string as used on the web page.

Google launched its own contextual advertising system in March 2003, and subsequently acquired Applied Semantics just over a month later. Adsense as we know it was launched and web masters could make considerable sums of money by attracting visitors to web pages specifically designed for the purpose. Every click on an advert earned cash from Google for the owner of the website displaying it.

But even then people found a means of spamming the search engines by creating pages with hundreds of advertisements by just adding a little text to the page. This meant they were earning vast amounts of money for basically doing nothing. So to stop this spamming of the indexes Google rolled out what is termed LSI or latent semantic indexing, to its indexing algorithm, very similar to what they use to determine the adverts it displays in its paid Adsence adverts.

Semantic search will be the future of search engine technology and is seen by many web masters to be Web 3.0. LSI is what most SEO experts seem to try to use to make there clients pages get indexed, but ask them what it means and you would get many different answers.

Semantic search engines seem almost human, ask it what the population of Cumbria is and it will give an answer before any indexed pages, it also knows good English, to make your pages more relevant you need not just lots of content but this has to be punctual, correct spelling and read correctly or this could harm your rankings.

Semantics will also look for words similar in meaning to the word your trying to promote, for example web design and website designer would be both used from your page but still get you up the rankings for web design.

To sum up if you want to be indexed in Google, you need to have plenty of relevant well structured content with lots of alternative words to your chosen keyword, plenty of back links to your site, a site map, headings on your page such as h1 and more content. To get there just practice Semantics.