Semantic Search & Contextual Understanding
Semantic search goes beyond surface-level keyword matching. It uses sophisticated algorithms to understand the context and relationships between words.
🧠🔍 Contextual Understanding
- Advanced Matching: Semantic search goes beyond simple keyword matching by analyzing the context and meaning behind the words.
- Example: If you search for “pizza near me” at 11 p.m. 🍕⏳, the search engine won’t just list all pizza places. It will prioritize those open late 🌙 or offering night delivery 🚗, understanding the time-sensitive nature of your query.
🏛️🔗 Entities and Relationships
- Entity Recognition: Search engines recognize entities—such as people, places, and things—and their interconnections.
- Google Knowledge Graph: A vast database containing over 500 billion facts about 5 billion entities.
- Example: When you search for “Apple” 🍏💻, Google understands it not just as a fruit but as a company 🏢, providing related details like its CEO or current stock prices 📈.
🎯🧐 User Intent
- Understanding Intent: Semantic search takes into account user intent by considering factors like search history, location, and global trends 🌍.
- Enhanced Relevance: This approach aims to deliver more intuitive and relevant search experiences by grasping the nuanced needs behind each query. ✅🔎
Lexical Search vs Semantic Search
NLP in Semantic Search
How Semantic Search Engine Work?
Back in the day, Google evaluated a page’s topic based 100% on relevant keywords.
Google Used to Only Look at Keywords
For example, if you wrote a page that used the keyword “Paleo Diet” over and over again, that told Google: “That keyword appears all over the page. This page must be about the Paleo Diet!”
Repeating Keywords Was Effective
Repeating keywords used to be effective, but then in 2013, Google launched their Hummingbird Algorithm.
Google Hummingbird Algorithm
This search engine algorithm changed how Google Search worked in a major way. Instead of only looking at keywords, it now reads and understands a page’s overall topic.
Hummingbird Assesses Overall Topic
(Very similar to how a human would.) For example, if you typed “Paleo diet health benefits” in the search bar pre-Hummingbird, Google would show you pages that had that exact phrase on the web page.
The Shift in Focus
Hummingbird is smarter than before. Yes, Google still looks for keywords, but they don’t rely solely on them. Instead of only scanning pages for keywords, they look for pages that best cover the core topic “Paleo diet and health.”
Delivering the Best Results
Google now presents search results based on how well pages cover the overall topic, providing users with more relevant and comprehensive information.
