Kenneth C. Laudon,Jane P. Laudon Management Information System 12th Edition pdf

Search engine optimization (SEO)

is the process of improving the quality

and volume of Web traffic to a Web site by employing a series of techniques that

help a Web site achieve a higher ranking with the major search engines when

certain keywords and phrases are put in the search field. One technique is to

make sure that the keywords used in the Web site description match the

keywords likely to be used as search terms by prospective customers. For exam-

ple, your Web site is more likely to be among the first ranked by search engines

---

Chapter 7

Telecommunications, the Internet, and Wireless Technology

271

if it uses the keyword “lighting” rather than “lamps” if most prospective

customers are searching for “lighting.” It is also advantageous to link your Web

site to as many other Web sites as possible because search engines evaluate

such links to determine the popularity of a Web page and how it is linked to

other content on the Web. The assumption is the more links there are to a Web

site, the more useful the Web site must be.

In 2010, about 110 million people each day in the United States alone used a

search engine, producing over 17 billion searches a month. There are hundreds

of search engines, but the top three (Google, Yahoo!, and Bing) account for over

90 percent of all searches (see Figure 7-14).

Although search engines were originally built to search text documents, the

explosion in online video and images has created a demand for search engines

that can quickly find specific videos. The words “dance,” “love,” “music,” and

“girl” are all exceedingly popular in titles of YouTube videos, and searching on

these keywords produces a flood of responses even though the actual contents

of the video may have nothing to do with the search term. Searching videos is

challenging because computers are not very good or quick at recognizing digital

images. Some search engines have started indexing movie scripts so it will be

possible to search on dialogue to find a movie. Blinkx.com is a popular video

search service and Google has added video search capabilities.