In Which I (sort of) Review Google Semantic Search
In Which I (sort of) Review Google Semantic Search

In Which I (sort of) Review Google Semantic Search

Having decide to participate in my self-indulgence, (for which kindness I thank you), let me first re-iterate that this is only sort of a review.  It’s more a look at the impact of this interesting book on me, than any sort of précis or serious critique on the book itself.

It’s long and a bit rambling in my own eccentric style, and may say more about me, than about the book.  With that fair warning, I give you one last chance to click back and stick to the tl;dr version.

Right. :D  If you’re still with me, you might recall that a little while ago, I met this chap named David Amerland online, and because he was a nice, friendly, very clever and above all engaging person, I found myself telling him I would buy his book.  (You can read the full (short) story here.)

The Really Important Bit

And then I read it.  It took me an unusually long time to read it, and I speak as somebody who tends to knock off a big fat door-stopper of a fiction book in three or four days.  This slim volume took me a good week to read properly.  Mainly because I had to stop every few pages and have a think.  And a few times I went back and read a chapter again, so I could think about it a bit more.  And then I spent a long time thinking about what I’d thought about it.

An Engaging Image
Apparently we should use images.

The real impact of this book on me is actually easy to describe.  It’s the explaining why that took all this time…

Since I’m involved in the industry to some extent, I was technically aware of a lot of the basics, and by the time I found out about, ordered, and read the book, I’d read many articles and discussions (some by the author himself) about semantic search and its implications.

But that was what I like to refer to as intellectual knowledge.  It was knowledge that my brain could access at need, but which I didn’t really think about otherwise, or change anything much because of.  And as any part-way decent sage or guru could tell you, knowing the facts is only half of true knowledge.

Seeing it all set out there, neatly supported and presented in a coherent, logical progression, did something that all those articles and discussions never achieved.  It brought the reality of the future of search, and indeed the whole internet, home to me in a way that I hadn’t expected.  It made me start to believe it, and not just “know” it.

What Google Semantic Search did was reinforce that intellectual knowledge, and turn it into emotional knowledge instead.

The Horror, The Horror

Now, if you’ve ever wandered through some of my monologues before, you might have gathered that I’m not exactly a Google or open social web type of person.  It’s not that it’s passed me by as such, it’s just that I’ve wilfully ignored it.  On the whole, my personal little corners of the web (as opposed to my professional ones) have been, and will probably remain, relatively untouched by the upheaval.

I’ve watched with quiet disappointment as the web began pushing toward real-word identifiers for its denizens, and quiet fascination as everybody and their dog plastered their entire lives online for the world to see.  I’ve bemoaned the ways in which Google has changed.  I’ve complained about people trying to sell things on social media. And I believe that SEO screwed up the web.

As change-averse sort of user who doesn’t see anything particularly wrong with the way the net has worked in the past, you might guess the terror with which I contemplate the future that the author so blithely imagines.

Another Engaging Image
I’m not very visual though. Strictly verbal in fact.

Search that’s not just built into your device, but potentially into your very brain itself.  The leveraging of data to such an extent that your search engine can actually converse with you.

That your calendar can know it should remind you to make a dentists appointment six months after your last one.  That your account might know you buy coffee every morning and automatically direct you to the nearest good coffee-shop when you’re in a strange city.

Now maybe I read too much Ellison once upon a time, but personally I can never contemplate the utter intrusion of technology into our lives to such an extent without a vague horror that I’m entirely unable to shake.

The Excitement

It’s not all doom and gloom though.  There is no doubt in my mind that we are at the dawn of a whole new era of the data-communications age.

That every step along the way so far has been an almost inevitable progression to where we are right now, and that that in itself is only the very beginning of where we will one day be.  All those programmers who read Neuromancer in the 80’s and wanted to make it like that…well…they’re doing it. Or their spiritual heirs are.

That alone is a heady realisation.  And there is of course a certain gratification in seeing that what I had always believed about the formation and development of online relationships on a small scale, is translating quite effectively into a far larger scale than I would have ever imagined.

Call it engagement, connectivity, relationship marketing (although I’m not too fond of the connotations of that last one), call it whatever you like.  One apparently impending reality is that your reputation, the sum score of all your online interaction, for good or ill, is going to start counting.  And in general, that seems like a good thing to me.  Because what you say and how you say it should count for something.

Semantic Search And A.I.

Another exciting thing is that search is no longer going to have to rely so much on offering you a bunch of best guesses, and leaving it to you to decide what you wanted.  I’m not convinced it is necessarily a good thing in every sense, but it certainly is exciting. (I wonder at which point we stop calling it search?)

Final Engaging Image
I do see the problem with walls of text though.

The idea that Google is going to one day know everything that it has stored in its servers is sorta mind-boggling.  That it could connect a query now with a query made in the past and know that you’re referencing that past query and provide the contextually correct answer without your refinement is incredible.  Without a doubt, the semantic web and (by inference, although more directly) the immense databases of meaning that are being built not just for search, but actually by it, is the next step along the road to true artificial intelligence.  And unless I miss my guess, perhaps the seminal, ground-breaking step.

Semantic search is almost certainly bringing A.I. closer than we realise.

Because up until now, computers have not understood what they contain.  They have only known it.  Intellectually, as it were.  But as more of what they know becomes about what they know, we make it possible for them to create connections from information, instead of just storing it.  In the last paragraph I used the word “inference.”  And that is exactly what semantic search appears to be teaching computers to do.  To infer a connection between multiple pieces of data, based on the meaning contained in them, and not just on probable relations between them based on specific terms or rules.

And that’s pretty damn exciting.  But I suppose I should say something about the actual book… ;)

Style, Story & Substance

If anything about this book reveals the ability of the author as an author, it’s the fact that he manages to make a fluid and compelling story from his topic.  Touches of dry humour and apt analogies enliven a theme that could easily have been dull in the wrong hands. (On a personal note, I love seeing comma’s used parenthetically. :D )

However, I may be part of the target audience in a more conceptual than practical way.  Being one of those people who waste their time accumulating knowledge for its own sake, ( ;) ), I would have been happy with more of the underlying details than the editor permitted.  That said, the comprehensive references (and how nice to see people we’ve read and engaged with on Google+ both referenced and acknowledged) will no doubt interfere with my “to be read” pile for months to come.

Practical Application

Much (but by no means all) of the practical advice is understandably geared either toward far larger businesses than the majority of people I personally talk to, or toward cultures (both business and consumer) that are much more deeply enmeshed in the online marketplace than is currently the case in our own emerging market.

If I gave the excellent preparation checklists included in each chapter to a selection of clients, 90% would look at me as if I was insane, and the other 10% would call me an idiot.  The challenge then from my point of view is to effectively downscale the conceptual application to a practical one that is both manageable and understandable for an audience still rather firmly seated in an off-line business paradigm.

Opportunities In The Threat

That’s changing of course, slowly.  And it’s bringing it’s own challenges and problems with it.  Because search doesn’t take into account that, as one example, people here are unlikely to review or connect about most products or services online.  Small brands are not thinking about unifying an identity and message across channels, they all too often barely know what their identity is.  Search might be looking for signals, but they’re going to be few and far between in the sea of noise that is our current online culture.

Really the last one
Whoops, needed another one for all this text.

Don’t get me wrong…there’s a great opportunity there too.  Because of the relative dearth of those signals across our marketplace, anybody who manages to convince their clients that it’s necessary to pursue this, and who helps them to do so effectively, is going to have something of an advantage.  When signals are slim, the ones that do arise are going to stand out.  And that alone will, I trust, make the effort worthwhile for the people who realise and embrace it.

But in order to get there, there are hurdles that must be overcome.  And I understand that, because as I mentioned before, I’m pretty change-averse myself.  To really convince people, you need to not only understand it, but you need to believe it and practice it yourself.  It’s no coincidence that the words “convince” and “conviction” share the same Latin root.

My Own Experience

Since I’ve read Google Semantic Search, I’ve managed to convince exactly 4 clients that they need to start embracing this new way of thinking about search, content and engagement.

I also, (counter-intuitively some might say), exhorted them not to pay us to do it for them, because nobody could be as authentic with their online presence as they could themselves.

Conversely, the one client who came to us already wanting to do it (and in theory therefore understanding its importance) has insisted that we do it for him. (Go figure.)

Hey, these block quotes are great for little off-topic remarks. (Took me long enough to build them in CSS. (The things we do to put off writing.))

In one meeting, as I became (unusually for me) quite animated about it, the guy I was talking to remarked that I was obviously a convert.  And I thought about that for a while before realising that he was right.

And that is what this book has done to me.

In Conclusion

If you’ve made it all the way through the rambling 2,000 odd words that purport to be this review of Google Semantic Search, then I regret to inform you that there is no shock or final important take-away that I’ve buried down here.

This is probably the first time I’ve ever read a “business” book, and I’m damned glad I did.  If you only read one book about online marketing and SEO, this should be the one.  Not because of the information it has, (which can be picked up online anywhere that industry thought leaders are talking or writing), and not because of the practical suggestions on how to take advantage of it (excellent though they are).

No, this is the book to read because it not only unifies the underlying concepts of semantic search and its implications for business, but also combines them in a coherent and meaningful framework that is understandable, actionable and above all, both interesting and thought provoking.

If you read this and it doesn’t make you look at the entire principle of search and SEO differently, then you probably need to read it again.

Google Semantic Search
A genuine pic to grace the post.