IT for Management: On-Demand Strategies for Performance, Growth, and Sustainability

Eleventh Edition

Turban, Pollard, Wood

Chapter 6

Search, Semantic, and Recommendation Technology

Outline

• Case 6.1 Opening Case: Mint.com Uses Search Technology to Rank Above Established Competitors

• 6.1 Using Search Technology for Business Success

• 6.2 Organic Search and Search Engine Optimization

• 6.3 Pay-Per-Click and Paid Search Strategies

• 6.4 A Search for Meaning—Semantic Technology

• 6.5 Recommendation Engines

• Case 6.2 Business Case: Deciding What to Watch—Video Recommendations at Netflix

• Case 6.3 Video Case: Power Searching with Google

Learning Objectives (1 of 5)3Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

6.1 Search Technology

• Search engine (搜尋引擎) an application for locating Web pages or other content (e.g.,

documents, media files) on a computer network, Popular Web-based search engines

include Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

• Spider (網路爬蟲) s also known as crawlers, Web bots, or simply “bots”, spiders are small

computer programs designed to perform automated,

• Crawler search engines

• Google

• Web directories

• JoeAnt, Best of the Web

• Hybrid search engines

• Yahoo.com

• Meta-search engines

• Dogpile.com

• Semantic search engines

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How Crawler Search Engines Web

• The crawler control module assigns Web page URLs to programs called spiders or bots. The spider downloads these Web pages into a page repository and scans them for links. The links are transferred to the crawler control module and used to determine where the spiders will be sent in the future. (Most search engines also allow Web masters to submit URLs, requesting that their websites be scanned so they will appear in search results. These requests are added to the crawler control queue.)

• The indexer module creates look-up tables by extracting words from the Web pages and recording the URL where they were found. The indexer module also creates an inverted index that helps search engines efficiently locate relevant pages containing keywords used in a search. (See Figure 6.2 for examples of an inverted index.)

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How Crawler Search Engines Web• The collection analysis module creates utility indexes that aid in providing search

results. The utility indexes contain information about things such as how many pages are in a website, the geographic location of the website, number of pictures on a Web page, Web page length, or other site-specific information the search engine may use to determine the relevance of a page.

• The retrieval/ranking module determines the order in which pages are listed in a SERP. The methods by which search engines determine website listing order varies and the specific algorithms they use are often carefully guarded trade secrets. In some cases, a search engine may use hundreds of different criteria to determine which pages appear at the top of a SERP. Google, for instance, claims to use over 200 “clues” to determine how it ranks pages (Google.com, 2014).

• Web pages retrieved by the spiders, along with the indexes and ranking information, are stored on large servers (see IT at Work 6.1)

• The query interface is where users enter words that describe the kind of information they are looking for. The search engine then applies various algorithms to match the query string with information stored in the indexes to determine what pages to display in the SERP.

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Figure 6.1: Components of crawler search engines (Grehan, 2002).

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Figure 6.2: Search engines use invested indexes to efficiently locate Web content based on search query terms

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What Search Is Important for business Enterprise Search

• Why Search is Important for Business

• Search technology impacts business in each of the following ways:

• Enterprise search—finding information within your organization

• Recommendation engines—presenting information to users without

requiring them to conduct an active search

• Search engine marketing (SEM)—getting found by consumers on the Web

• Web search—finding crucial business information online

9Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Enterprise Search Marketing• Recommendation Engines

o represent an interesting twist on IR technology. Unlike Web search engines that begin with a user query for information, recommendation engines attempt to anticipate information that a user might be interested in.

o are used by e-commerce sites to recommend products; news organizations to recommend news articles and videos; Web advertisers to anticipate the ads people might respond to; and so on.

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)o A collection of online marketing strategies and tactics that promote brands by

increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through optimization and advertising.

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Search Engine Marketing

• SEM; Three basic search types:

o Informational search

o Navigational search

o Transactional search

• Strategies and tactics produce:

o Organic search listings

o Paid search listings

• Pay-per-click(PPC)

• (produce click-through rates)

o Social media optimization

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Enterprise Search Marketing

• Businesses utilize search engine optimization (SEO) to improve their website’s organic listings on SERPs.

• SEO specialists understand how search engines work and guide companies in designing websites and creating content that will produce higher organic SERP rankings than competitive websites.

• Paid search listings are often referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising because advertisers pay search engines based on how many people click on the ads.

• Typically, PPC ads are listed separately from organic search results.

• Managing an effective PPC ad campaign involves making strategic decisions about what keyword search queries you want to trigger the display of your ad.

• Click-through rates (CTRs) the percentage of people (%) who click on a hyperlinked area of a SERP or Web page.

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Using Search Technology for Business Success

1. What is the primary difference between a web directory and a crawler based search engine?

2. What is the purpose of an index in a search engine?

3. Why are companies increasingly interested in enterprise search tools capable of handling unstructured data?

4. What is the difference between search engine optimization and PPC advertising?

5. Describe three different real-time search tools.

13Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Learning Objectives (2 of 5)14Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

6.2 Organic Search and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• The goal of SEO practitioners is to help organizations increase traffic to their websites.

• They accomplish this by optimizing websites in an effort to increase visibility and ranking on SERPs.

• Using Web analytics programs like Google Analytics, companies can determine how many people visit their site, what specific pages they visit.

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6.2 Search Engine Optimization :Google’s Search Factors (1 of 3)

On-Page (directly controlled by webpage creator)

o Content

• Quality, relevance, up-to-date

Content Perhaps one of the biggest changes Google has made to its ranking algorithm over the years is an increased emphasis on high-quality content.

Some specific ways that Google determines if a website has high-quality content include the following:• The quality of writing on the Web page• The presence of relevant keywords and phrases associated with the topic• How “fresh” or up-to-date the content is• Use of multiple content formats (i.e., news, video, podcast, blog, and social content)• Depth or quantity of topical content• Links that point to other well-respected and trustworthy websites• The proportion of relevant to irrelevant text about a topic• Barriers to content have a negative impact on user satisfaction. Examples include making people register,

provide names, or fill out forms to get to content.

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6.2 Search Engine Optimization : Google’s Search Factors (2 of 3)

Functionality and programming Website functionality has an impact on SERP rankings. Pages that don’t load quickly or display well on mobile devices are less likely to result in a positive user experience. Information in a page’s HTML (programming language) Functionality and programming can be assessed by factors such as the following:

• How easily search engine programs can “crawl” the Web page.

• How well the Web page works with mobile devices.

• How quickly the Web page loads.

• Availability of secure (https://) connections for visitors.

• Minimal presence of duplicate content on the website.

• Page URLs that contain keywords.

• Use of topical words and phrases in source code metadata (e.g., title tags, page descriptions, keywords).

• How frequently users click on a listing in search results. Click-through rates (CTR) are determined in part by how attractive a website’s listing is on a SERP. The way a SERP listing looks is the result of the Web page’s HTML source code.

• Hacked websites, sites that infect users with malware, and sites that fail to clean up spam or irrelevant content in comment sections are all factors that negatively impact user experience.

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6.2 Search Engine Optimization: Google’s Search Factors (3 of 3)

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•Off-Page (influenced but not directly controlled by SEO professionals)•Relevance and credibility

•Backlinks to the target website on other well-respected and trustworthy websites. The use of backlinks is based on the

assumption that people who create website content are more likely to place links to high-quality websites than poor-quality sites on

their Web pages.

•Click-through rate (CTR) is also an indicator of relevance. Users are more likely to click on SERP listings related to the

information they’re searching for.

•Amount of advertising on the website—Too many ads detract from topical website content.

•Dwell time—This is a measure of how long a user remains on a page. Users stay on pages with useful content longer than pages

that lack useful content.

•Sites listed in respected Web directories are more likely to contain quality content because they have been reviewed by human

editors. Positive comments on review sites like Yelp.com and Zagat.com also have a positive impact on a website’s reputation.

•High-quality or helpful websites are more likely to be discussed on social media. Examples include comments on Facebook

and Google+, shares, Tweets, Likes, and so on.

•Site traffic—Sites with high-quality content tend to get more traffic over time.

Content and Inbound Marketing

• Inbound marketing

o An approach to marketing that emphasizes SEO, content Marketing, and social media strategies.

• Outbound marketing

o Traditional approach using mass media advertising.

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Organic Search and Search Engine Optimization

• Black Hat SEOo Gaming the system or tricking search engines into ranking a site

higher than its content deserves.

1. Link spamming: generating backlinks toward SEO, not adding user value.

2. Keyword tricks: embedded high-value keywords to drive up traffic statistics.

3. Ghost text: text hidden in the background that will affect page ranking

4. Shadow (ghost or cloaked) pages: created pages optimized to attract lots of people through redirect

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Organic Search and Search Engine Optimization Review

1. Search engines use many different “clues” about the quality of a website’s content to determine how a page should be ranked in search results. Explain how a search engine uses specific factors to determine the quality of a website’s content.

2. Backlinks are an important ranking factor in SEO. Explain what a backlink is and why search engines use it to determine how websites are listed in SERPs.

3. Explain why so-called black hat SEO tactics are ultimately short-sighted and can lead to significant consequences for businesses that use them.

4. What is the fundamental difference between on-page and off-page SEO factors?

5. Explain why providing high quality, regularly updated content is the most important aspect of any SEO strategy.

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Learning Objectives (3 of 5)22Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Pay-Per-Click Strategies

• PPC advertising campaigns:

• There are five steps to creating a PPC advertising campaign on search engines.1. Set an overall budget

2. Create ads

3. Select associated keywords

4. Set up billing account information

5. Modify key words and ad copy based on results

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Quality Score Factors

• Ad placement is also influenced by a quality score representing the search engine’s estimate of how successful the ad will be.

• According to Google, quality scores are determined by several factors:• Expected keyword click-through-rate (CTR)

• The past CTR of your URL (web address)

• Past effectiveness

• Landing page quality

• Relevance of keywords to ads

• Relevance of keywords to customer search

• Geographic performance in targeted regions

• Ad performance on difference devices

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Pay-Per-Click Advertising Metrics

• PPC advertiser use the following metrics to gauge the effectiveness of their campaigns:

o Click through rates (CTR): used to evaluate keyword selection and ad copy campaign decisions.

o Keyword conversion: should lead to sales, not just visits.

o Cost of customer acquisition (CoCA): amount of money spent to attract a paying customer.

o Return on advertising spend (ROAS): overall financial effectiveness.

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Pay-Per-Click and Paid Search Strategies Review

1. What would most people say is the fundamental difference between organic listings and PPC listings on a search engine?

2. What are the five primary steps to creating a PPC advertising campaign on search engines?

3. In addition to the “bid price” for a particular keyword, what other factor(s) influence the likelihood that an advertisement will appear on a search results page? Why don’t search engines just rely on the advertisers bid when deciding what ads will appear on the search results page?

4. How do on-page factors influence the effectiveness of PPC advertisements?

5. What factors determine an ad’s quality score?

6. Describe four metrics that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a PPC advertising campaign.

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Learning Objectives (4 of 5)27Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

6.4 A Search for Meaning—Semantic Technology

• Semantic Web

o Meaningful computing using metadata: application of natural language processing (NLP) to support information retrieval, analytics, and data-integration that compass both numerical and “unstructured” information

• Semantic Search

o Process of typing something into a search engine and getting more results than just those that feature the exact keyword typed into the search box

• Metadata

o Data that describes and provides information about other data.

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e.g. Google for Job

Evolution of the Web

Table 6.2 Evolution of the Web

Web 1.0 (The Initial Web)A Web of Pages

Pages or documents are “hyperlinked,” making it easier than ever before to access connected information.

Web 2.0 (The Social Web)A Web of Applications

New applications and technologies allow people to easily create, share, and organize information.

Web 3.0 (The Semantic Web)A Web of Data

Using metadata tags, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and other semantic tools, computers can be used to access specific information across platforms and applications, regardless of the original structure of the file, page or document. It turns the Web into a giant readable database.

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Semantic Web and Semantic Search• Metadata tags are just one approach used to semantic search

engines to understand the meaning of online content.

• Web is described by addition to metadata tags, semantic search engines use a variety of strategies to find meaning:

o natural language processing

o contextual cues

o synonyms

o word variations

o concept matching

o specialized queries

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Semantic Search Features and Benefits (1 of 2)

• Semantic Search Featureso Related searches/queries: alternatives provided

o Reference results: reference material provided

o Semantically annotated results: search terms and related terms are highlighted

o Full-text similarity search: a full block of text can be searched

o Search on semantic/syntactic annotations:

<organization> center </organization>

Johnson Research Center

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Semantic Search Features and Benefits (2 of 2)• Semantic Search Features

o Concept search: returns results related to concept

o Ontology-based search: uses relationships between data “What vegetables are green?”

o Semantic Web search: uses tagged data

o Faceted search: filtering based on predefined facets

o Clustered search: similar to facet search but without predefined facets

o Natural language search: extracts keywords from full question

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Semantic Web For Business

• Semantic Web offers opportunities and challenges for businesseso Must optimize websites for semantic search

o Metadata optimization produces richer and more attractive SERP listings (rich snippets)

o Detailed organic search listings produce greater CTRs

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A Search for Meaning—Semantic Technology

1. List five different practical ways that semantic technology is enhancing the search experience of users.

2. How do metadata tags facilitate more accurate search results?

3. Briefly describe the three evolutionary stages of the Internet?

4. Define the words “context,” “personalization,” and “vertical search” and explain how they make for more powerful and accurate search results.

5. What are the three languages developed by the W3C and associated with the semantic Web?

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Learning Objectives (5 of 5)35Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Recommendation Engines

• Proactively identify products that have a high probability of being something the consumer might want to buy.

• Amazon has long been recognized as having one of the best recommendation engines.

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Recommendation Filters• Content-based filtering

o Based on item similarity

o Uses product features in past interactions (viewing, liking, purchasing, wish list)

o Netflix, Pandora use this method

• Collaborative filteringo Based on user’s similarity to other people

o Analyzes purchase history

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Hybrid Recommendation Engines• Hybrid Approaches

o Weighted hybrid: results from different recommenders are assigned weight and combined numerically to determined final recommendations.

o Mixed hybrid: results from different recommenders presented along-side of each other.

o Cascade hybrid: results from different recommenders assigned a rank or priority.

o Mixed hybrid: results from different recommenders combines results from two recommender systems from the same technique category.

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Recommendation Filters• The common limitations are the following:

o Cold start or new user

o Sparsity

o Limited feature content

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