An introduction to web information retrieval

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Web search

Lunch and learn

Web search

• Interesting digital statistics• Background to web search

– What is web search?– Search engine market share– Origin of search engines

• An introduction to SEO– What is SEO?– How do sites rank?

Fascinating statistics

2010

30 hours

2013

50 hours

Population

~7 billion

Internet users

Active SM users

Active mobile subscriptions

~2.5 billion

~1.8 billion

~6.5 billion

February 2014

Europe internet penetration: 68%

UK internet penetration: 87%

Google statistics

8.64 billion

16.4% - 25%

163 searches

What is web search?

• Utility tool used to locate web sites on the web• Most popular method of finding information• A searcher driven program offering unique features to build and find

information

Public domain dedication license (no copyright)

Search engine market share

Google72%

Baidu15%

Yahoo6%

Bing6%

AOL0%

ASK0%

Excite0%

Other1%

1945

1950s

1990

Information retrieval

Automation

Archie

History of web search

Why use search engines?

• Resolve some problem– E.g. [London weather]

• Achieve some goal, which is usually linked to expanding knowledge– E.g. Download a map

SEONatural ranking / organic search

SEO: what and why?

• Makes web sites rank high on search engines– This increases web visibility– Gets more visitors…

How does SEO work?

WEB INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

Query dependentQuery independent

Term frequency

Term proximity

• Terms at the beginning of a document are more important than terms at the end

• Exact phrases are preferred

Search term order

Is Bing better than Google?

Is Google better than Bing?

Term location

H1

First line, first paragraph

Logowww.7thingsmedia.com

Meta data

• “Data about data”

Emphasis

• Bold• Italics

Inverse document frequency• Rare terms are preferred

What is emotional design?

Anchor text

• 7thingsmedia

Language

• Same language as user is preferred

Geo targeting

• Geographically closer websites have better rankings

[English workshop]

EnglishWorkshop.eu does not rank well in UK

WEB INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

Query dependentQuery independent

Directory hierarchy

Number of incoming links

• More links, higher ranking– Today it is all about quality as supposed to quantity

Link popularity

Up to date

• Current sites preferred

Document length

• Varies depending upon goal• For blog posts it is a good idea to have, minimum, 300 words

File format

• HTML preferred, PDF and .doc not so much

Site size

• Documents from large sites preferred, small not so much

SEO in 2014

Content marketing

Ranking factors Social media

PR

Digital marketing

Marketing

[email protected]@GeraldSearchwww.7thingsmedia.com@7thingsmedia

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