How To Use Latent Semantic Indexing Technology Principles to Improve Search Engine Ranking: Part 1	Visited: 649 Not rated Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Shishay Wubshet February 19, 2007

As with every other business, search engines are fighting to have a good market share by providing their visitors with relevant and useful information. Google as a leading search engine provider is working to improve its search results by continuously updating its algorithms to provide its visitors with relevant, useful and fresh information. One of the technologies, Google uses in its algorithm to provide users with relevant information is Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).

What is Latent Semantic Indexing?

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is an information retrieval technology that retrieves information from websites and information repositories based on the vector space model of document classification. Through the use of LSI technology, relevant information can be retrieved from a collection of documents based on its meaning or concept, even if the document does not have the search word.

Latest semantic indexing allows a search engine to determine a relevancy of a page not only with its search query, but also with the context of the search query. In other words, LSI helps search engine to retrieve data based on the context of the search query. For instance, Search engine are able to identify “Laptop” and “Notebook computer” are similar conceptually.

Google has long been using Latent Semantic Indexing for adsense to display relevant advertisement on adsense publisher’s websites. Undeniable evidence suggests that Google is also giving LSI more emphasis in its search algorithm to provide its visitors with relevant information.

How To Determine Which Words Are Semantically Identical?

In order to find words, which are semantically similar to a given word, do a search in Google using a tilde (~) function. Google with automatically pull the result, with semantic words bolded. For Instance, if you want to search for words semantically related to car, insert ~car into Google search box. Semantically related words will appear bolded in the search result. The following words are semantically related to a keyword “Car”.

Cars Auto Automobile Automotive

And for the search ~Laptop

Laptops Notebook Computer Notebook Computers Laptop Computers

Importance of Latent Semantic Indexing

Google uses latent semantic Indexing to combat spamming and provide its customers with relevant, useful and fresh information. It is believed that, Google is implementing LSI in its algorithm for the following tasks:

1. Provide its customers (searchers) with relevant and useful information; 2. Identify poor quality websites (content wise); 3. Identify duplicate content; 4. Examine link profile.

Summary

As search engine, like Google are giving latent semantic indexing more emphasis in providing searchers with useful and relevant information, it is important to design LSI friendly websites to improve the relevancy of your website so as to get a good page rank.