While the concept may sound simple, it took some of the best brains at Google to come up with it, and it’s valuable enough to warrant a U.S. patent. Google’s recent associative search algorithm groups results based on past search behavior and will change the way in which search engine optimization (SEO) professionals go about their business.
Bill Slawski of SEO by the Sea uses the example of multiple searchers for "banana," "apple," "pineapple" to explain the functionality of Google’s new algorithm. Google will now recognize that a series of such queries means that users are searching for "fruit" and will adjust the results that it displays accordingly.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is likely to be changed by this development, according to experts. Pushing a result higher or lower on a results page could have a number of effects, both positive and negative. A company trying to recover from bad press, for example, could wind up grouped with unrelated companies. On the other hand, a newly-launched website could luck into an association with a wildly popular search term.
Google was granted the patent last week, after a roughly five-month review by the U.S. Patent Office.
