SEO & Bars

For this week’s reading, we read “User Context Signals & Search Engine Rankings.” In this text, George Nguyen, the author, discusses SEO with an analogy to the periodic table of elements. He uses two-letter terms such as “Hs” to talk about Google’s use of recent searches to customize our search results. He does this with other terms such as User Experience (Ux), Country (Co), Locality (Lo), and Intent (In). The most insightful thing I found in this text was when Nguyen discussed the different intents throughout a user’s journey on the internet. The different intents include Navigational (users looking for an item or brand), Informational (users looking up more in-depth information), Commercial (users looking into more in-depth info as they are near to buying), and transactional (users are ready to buy). 


One example I’d like to share is my search results when searching “Bars.” I live in a small town with no nightlife scene. However, Google was able to bring up one little bar that exists in my town and a few more in the neighboring town of Mesquite, NV. Furthermore, the top searches on the page were from prominent review sights such as Yelp and TripAdvisor. All of the results on this page make sense because anyone that just searches up “bars” without any additional words with context is trying to find anything related to that term nearby. One could argue you’re searching for a metal bar or a candy bar, but based on what we know about algorithms, it’s probably not a common thing people search for.


Here are a couple pictures of my search result page:

Comments

  1. Cora WilliamsonOctober 7, 2022 at 11:09 AM

    Hi Cesar! That’s a great example, thank you for sharing. You did a great job describing the content of the reading we did this week. I can tell you understand it, and I think anyone reading this would be able to understand even if they didn’t have prior knowledge on the subject. I like how you used your example to show how Google was able to sort your request accurately into navigational, despite there being no explicit indication that that was what you were looking for. Not only that, but it focused on local results. It’s pretty cool that computers are able to infer so much off of our requests despite how minimal our search queries are.

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  2. TaelaOctober 11, 2022 at 7:30 PM

    Cesar,
    I really liked your example and I have always enjoyed the insights you have to give during class about SEO and your own experiences online. I have noticed the same things in the other small towns I have lived in that are similar to where you are from when it comes to my google searches. I found it interesting how much location has an impact on our search experience and how SEO uses that as an advantage. Great thoughts!

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