The Google Acquisition Continues With Metaweb
Posted on by Ryan Deiss in Search Engine Optimization
Google is getting really good at one particular thing that has spurred much of their recent growth. It’s one skill that can only be mastered by a company with TONS of cash. I suppose you can call it the art of ‘acquisition’.
Or more simply, they buy a lot of fledgling companies that are packed with web geniuses that can help Google tromp forward across their vast online kingdom.
This time, I’m actually pretty intrigued by their newest purchase of Metaweb, a hyper ambitious group of people putting together a database of the web’s info called Freebase.
I’ll skip the boring details of how they acquired Metaweb and who works there, and give you a quick explanation of what Metaweb does and how they can help Google be a better place for you and me.
Metaweb is tackling the problem created by semantics, where one word can mean many different things. This is something that standard search engines can’t fully overcome.
So Metaweb is building a search database built off of entities (a singular person, place or thing). The easiest way to put this is to say you wanted to search for Female Novelists in New York City. Instead of searching for pages that have those three defining keywords, Metaweb will relate entities to one another until it narrows it down.
In the end it gets boiled down to a few different relevant entities (novelists, new yorkers, females, etc) and how they relate. If everything goes correctly, exact results will index and not just pages that have all or most of your broad keywords.
Another way you can use Metaweb would be to select an entity like a popular band, then ask Metaweb for what’s under the hood of the particular entity. There you could access their songs, biographies, pics, vids, etc. Pretty sweet ineed. 
At some point Google will start using Metaweb to help them out with the difficult searches that they currently struggle with. At the end of the day this is Google getting smarter.
Getting smarter could be good and bad for us Internet marketers. Agreed? Smarter could mean more accurate indexing of our content but it could also mean we have more hurdles to leap through to get solid rankings. What do you think? Comment Below!
Free Training Event
Tjäna Pengar
29. Jul, 2010
You always come up with good material man!
Thanx for all Your insights!
I think we are going to see some changes in ranking in the following Year.
Thanx again for all your help:)
Petter
Dez Futak
22. Jul, 2010
I reckon it will be good news in one sense: maybe it will herald the demise of the oxymoron “universal search”
Ie, at the moment, Google is pulling data from everywhere & attempting to guess what fits best by looking at the interconnections..but as their acquisition of Metaweb shows, that’s only a tiny piece of the whole orchestral harmony of interconnectivity out there.
What might it mean for us as marketers?
Well, if we “do it right”, it will be awesome for brand management and growing our raving fan base.
What do you think?
Dez.
Ryan Deiss
22. Jul, 2010
@Dez Futak, Yeah, I can see that, if we become an entity then it will be much easier for us to know what’s indexing for our search terms and it will be even easier for fans to find out all they could possibly want to know about us.
Robert
21. Jul, 2010
When is Google going to make an acquisition so they can abandon this crappy standard of follow/nofollow links.
The nofollow standard that Google foisted upon the Internet is the single worst development for Internet marketers since the Internet’s inception.
John
20. Jul, 2010
Thanks for this Ryan.
Gotta say, for a long time now, I’ve felt Google will HAVE to move away from relying too heavily on link equity as a ranking factor.
It’s this type of thing that will help them. I’m glad to say I think good quality content is coming back stronger but I can’t see Google giving up on their key component to rank.
I think you will need all three elements for sure – good content, good links and good activity on your site.
Ryan Deiss
20. Jul, 2010
@John, well put. I agree that Google probably won’t be giving up link equity any time soon, but if good quality content is on the rise maybe this is the kind of move that will allow Google to better assess the quality of content.