Semantic Search Engine and New Type of Surfing

The Internet community is buzzing about new type of search engines - semantic search engines - and the changes that they might bring to the Internet marketing, SEO and online business.

My recent search engine marketing research of Google.com and Hakia.com (semantic search engine, in beta version) was aimed at checking the 'usefulness' of their search results and the difference in surfing experience.

Research Rules:

(1) Search done in different niches.
(2) Search done 2-3 pages deep (as usual surfer do).

The research results may not be full and represent the whole picture, however I was objective, and you can double check yourself with the queries used below.

Comparison of Queries.

(1) Search Query - Search Engine Optimization.

Google.com: displayed wikipedia link; gave some links to forums and to SEO companies; but it's important to mention that most of the results where - index pages of websites, as if Google was helping you to find industry leaders (SEO companies or forums).

Hakia.com: gave more links to the pages where educational info about SEO was published (usually article directories); also some communities (again, more to the pages where SEO basics are touched); also links news, but for some reason they were broken - maybe it's a problem of a beta version.

Summary: Google was showing more industry leaders (SEO companies or forums or communities), Hakia was more inclined to display content about what is SEO.

(2) Search Query - Website Hosting Mistakes.

Google.com: mostly the pages with articles on all types of sites, popular article directories or nicely established niche sites with articles about this topic published.

Hakia.com: the same to Google, and many matches - links to the same content, sometimes on the same sites.

Summary: both search engines when it comes to the educational type of content were quite good and displayed the articles that really helped to explain typical website hosting mistakes; this can be a good sign that Google indeed cares about content and maybe already plays the semantic game.

(3) Search Query - Payment Solution.

Google.com: mostly the industry majors that provide all types of payment solutions.

Hakia.com: also some industry majors, but a lot less then Google gave; plus very often Hakia was showing sites that had no relations to payment solutions (e.g. some IT companies that in their list of products and services).

Summary: Google was really helpful as instantly showed the leaders of the industry for people to choose the best solutions, Hakia for some reason came into the trap when it was not showing much of the educational content about payment solutions and also gave many companies that had did not have real connection to the topic.

(4) Search Query - BMW Z4 Coupe.

Google.com: many reviews, road tests and news from the nicely established niche sites (among them - car sellers); strange but the first link from official BMW site was quite low in the results.

Hakia.com: one of the top links was the one from official site where I could play with colors of this great car and had its review; also many niche news, forums, magazines and car sellers.

Summary: Hakia turned to be quicker in sending me to the official page, perhaps here the semantic content helped to find the car's official details, but on this very query the results can be estimated as pretty equal.

Research Summary.

Google seems to be binding us to the sites that fit the search demand, and Hakia binds us to the content.

The difference is big, especially to those who got used to the Google style of surfing, when submitting a query into the search field is giving you the list of vendors, providers, top sellers, inventors, authors of reviews - those who give you the top 'offers' in the niche. With Hakia I had to get used to seeing more of a content, instead of top 'sellers' - and that was unusual. In some niches that can be a win for Hakia. But I think that as many people are looking to get shortcutted to the sellers (providers/authors/inventors) - they will strongly trust the Google style.

Future of SEO and Internet Marketing.

From what I saw - no need to worry. Semantic engines are addicted to content - give them content, it's easy and there are so many ways to give good content that all scary talks about death of SEO and IM are just scary talks. Everything is like it used to be before - good content, some reasonable on-page optimization, trust in the eyes of search engines and backlinks from authority sites.

Let's wish this new type of search engines good luck in giving all us the new quality of search results. And we will do the best to give the 'content meat' for search engines. Lots of ways to do that, you just need to listen to the tips of search engine marketing and optimization experts.