All You Need to Know About Semantic Search

If you’re an SEO specialist, you’ll know that Google has shifted from being a search engine to becoming an answer engine. Years ago, if you entered a query like “best restaurants in Dothan”, Google would have returned a set of pages that simply had those words in the title. Today, Google returns a direct list of top restaurants along with reviews, opening hours and prices.

Similarly, for a query like “What is the height of the Eiffel Tower?”, Google returns a direct answer — “300 m”.

Google has moved away from processing a search query made up of “strings” to one made up of “things”. It can now correctly identify the objects present in a query and the relationships between them in order to compute the real intent of the user. All this happens because of semantic search.

Semantic search is the technology that transformed Google from a search engine into an answer engine.

What Is Semantic Search?

Semantics is the study of meaning. In the context of Google, semantic search is a data-searching technique that identifies the meaning of the words in a search query in order to find and present the best set of results to the user.

A helpful way to picture it is to think of entities and the attributes and relationships between them — the way Google models a family, for example. When you search “What is the name of the Simpsons’ dog?”, Google returns a direct answer: “Santa’s Little Helper”.

When Did Semantic Search Come Into Existence?

One of the earliest semantic-search inventions was patented by Google in 1999, entitled “Extracting patterns and relations from scattered databases such as the world wide web”. If you’re comfortable with equations, that patent describes the DIPRE method and the pattern-relation duality at the heart of the idea.

How Does Google Process a Query Using Semantics?

To understand how a search query is processed using semantic-search technology, follow these steps:

1. A search query is entered by the user.
2. The search query is received by the search engine.
3. The query is parsed. A parser analyses the string of words in natural language, breaking the query into parts that can be processed to determine its meaning.
4. The relationships between the search terms are identified using an association database — better known as the Knowledge Graph — from which the results of many queries are directly fetched.
5. It selects documents that match the intent of the user based on the identified entities and their relationships.
6. The results are displayed to the user as a direct answer, a set of webpages, or both.

Google Hummingbird uses the power of both semantic search and the Knowledge Graph to process queries.

How To Make Your Webpages Semantic-Search Friendly

Semantic search is all about understanding the intent of the user and presenting the best set of results that directly answers their query. To make your webpages semantic-search friendly, follow these tips:

• Present content in a question-and-answer pattern. It becomes easier for search engines to interpret the content as direct answers, which helps it earn a featured snippet.
• Pay attention to relevance and how thoroughly your page covers a topic. The more completely and clearly you answer a query, the better your chances of ranking.
• Add relevant images and videos that support your target topic. Always think of the user first — if a short video makes your content easier to understand, take the time to create one.
• Semantic search considers topics rather than isolated keywords, so narrow the focus of each page to a single topic.
• Use Schema.org structured data to add accurate metadata to your pages. This helps Google and other search engines better understand your content.

Final Thoughts

In essence, semantic search does not look at lexical matches of the search query — it looks at the overall meaning behind it. Voice search continues to play a growing role in the identification of search intent, with Google returning accurate answers spoken aloud as well as in text. Building content that genuinely answers your audience’s questions is the surest way to stay visible as search keeps evolving.