Google: Are Keywords King?

David Worlock, CEO of EPS Limited, published an article today (as part of the EPS Insights service) discussing Google and the semantic web. He caught my interest with his account of how Google was reacting to a potentially radical change in their market: semantic web searching. 

While attending the Boston meeting of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Google got into a "confrontation" concerning the importance of semantic web searching.

Keyword search is at the core of Google’s business. And as David points out, “…what is more difficult…than a company created by a technology re-inventing itself in terms of a new technology?”  

No wonder “Google seems anxious to diminish [the value of] semantic web searching”.

How did they do that?

“Google pointed to user and webmaster incompetence”. If this were true, wouldn’t you want to be the first to create the tools and mechanisms to make this easier for your customers? If you don’t, don’t you think someone else will?  

“The answer to the Semantic Web, from a Google stance, thus appears to be: very interesting, but not very soon.”

If there is one thing I hope we’ve all learned over the last several years, it’s that there are no longer laurels on which we can rest. 

We all need to continuously change to keep up with the customers we serve and the options available to them. If we really want to “WOW” them we have to do more than keep up, we need to lead the way.

I would love to know what Google is doing about semantic web searching. Is their extraordinary success with keyword search causing them to completely ignore semantic search or are they just keeping quiet?