Machine learning used by search engines

As Preston’s leading SEO, web design and web marketing professionals, here at Pumpkin Web Design, we make it our business to fully understand search engine algorithms, to ensure that we get the right results for your company. In fact, we provide a wide range of website solutions and SEO services that rely on this knowledge, across Preston and the North West, from Southport to Wigan, and even Manchester, across a range of business sectors. One of the biggest developments in terms of search engine design is the use and application of machine learning. But what does this involve?

What are the different types of machine learning used by search engines?

Search engines typically use a range of machine learning options, for a number of different purposes. These machine learning options include:

• Natural language processing
• Pattern detection
• Personalized search

Search engines use natural language processing

In order to fully understand search terms and also to understand the content of blogs and articles online, it is necessary for search engines to be able to not only read words but also to understand the nuances of natural language. This allows the meaning of content to be understood so that only relevant content will be selected for the right search results. This helps to ensure that users see the results that will benefit them the most, and it also ensures that your content is shown to the people who want to read it the most.

Search engines use pattern detection

Pattern detection is a key part of the machine learning that search engines put into action. With pattern detection, search engines are able to detect a range of things including spam, duplicate content and low quality content. The latter for example has a number of key indicators or patterns that machine learning can detect. These are:

• The presence of several outbound links to unrelated pages.
• Lots of uses of stop words or synonyms.
• The occurrence rate of identified “spammy” keywords.

By using machine learning to flag and identify any low quality pieces of content, search engines can review pieces of content and prevent low quality pieces, or spam, from making it to the top of the search engine results page. This improves the user experience and means that your company content will only be competing with the best.

Search engines use machine learning for personalized search

Personalized search is the process of providing each individual search engine user with results that are selected based on their previous browsing experience and behaviour. This means that in theory each searcher will be shown different results based on their individual search profile. For search engines, this option improves the user experience and allows users to see more content relevant to the individual. However, this is something that is currently under scrutiny with issues around digital echo-chambers being responsible for causing social division.

For more information and advice about web marketing, get in touch with the experts today, here at Pumpkin Web Design.