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SEO myths & crap; LSI and Google

By theGypsy | February 24, 2010

Hiya kids… today we’re talking some bullshit of the highest order; a situation that almost epitomizes the misinformation that hounds the SEO world. This one is a long standing oddity that I’ve personally gone off on in the past. (most recently here)

To make a long and redundant story short (I shit you not, more here) this whole thing began when Google purchased a company called Applied Semantics. This company was stated at the time to be of interest to Google for their new ad matching technology dubbed ‘AdSense’.

Yup, that’s right. Does that sound familiar to you Mr. LSI SEO dumbnuts? Ad-Sense… say it faster… AdSense. But oh no… some nearly 6 years later and there are still those that missed it. There is still crap hat SEO services and chatter on forums of the mystical LSI and Google.

Just to get it home… from the press release;

They spoke of their interest in, “Applied Semantics’ AdSense product that enables web publishers to understand the key themes on web pages to deliver highly relevant and targeted advertisements.”

Get that? It was for AdSense that LSI was originally incorporated jack ass.


SEO myths & crap; LSI and Google

I can hear the nay-sayers now

“But it could have been used for the organic search”

No no no no. STFU and sit back down skippy. How do you explain Anna Patterson and Phrase Based IR purchase less than a year later? Those were some pretty interesting semantic analysis methods (often confused with LSI)… Weren’t the Google engineers marvelling at PLSA, HTMM and even LDA over on the Google research blog a year or so back?

Confused? More here at your leisure;

  1. Phrase based indexing and retrieval methods
  2. Probabilistic latent semantic analysis
  3. Latent Dirichlet allocation
  4. Hidden Topic Markov Models

Then you might want to read this Google Research post from 2007…just for shits and giggles.

So? What about those? Can someone selling this fucking Google LSI bullshit please drop by and share the data with me that points to the assertion yer making? On second thought, forget it. Just stop using the term Latent Semantic Indexing/Analysis and we’ll all be better for it

SEO myths & crap; LSI and Google

Say it along with me; Semantic Analysis

What SHOULD SEOs refer to it as? No idea man… if I was that smart I’d work at Google not wallowing here in misery. Just start saying that, “Google uses semantic analysis”. What flavour? We don’t know… but at least we’re not bullshitting people right?

At the end of the day people seemed to have gotten lost somewhere between 2003 and 2006 when the ‘Google LSI’ crap really picked up speed. It went from being the incarnation of AdSense to being the semantic tool of choice in the regular index/SERPs. Even the history doesn’t agree with that (shit, even the phrase based stuff and hiring on Anna Patterson was shortly after).

And there lies much of the problem, SEOs not only having a low level of information retrieval knowledge, but not understanding search history either.

The next time some dumbass SEO starts talking about LSI, please, I implore you, send them to this post. Or hey, just shake them about some and tell them to stop making the rest of us look like a bunch of ignorant snake oil shit heads.

Thanks…

Crap worth nuking!!

How Does Google Use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)? – Sounds pretty says nothing…

What Is Google LSI - References Anna Pattersons PaIR patents as LSI… duh

Google Debunks LSI – Then Shows You How To Do It - Understands it doesn’t scale well, but still cashes in on the term

Warning – “Advanced” SEO Technique DOES NOT WORK – Talks about LSI but uses the Anna Patterson patents as the example; FAIL

Is LSI Dead? - Clueless… doesn’t get it.

The Google LSI Handbook – what can I say… WOW… assholes.

…there’s lot’s more…but I can’t stomach it…. ugh…

No Bullshit? Then just Share it!
  • SEO myths & crap; LSI and Google

Topics: Myths and Crap, Snake Oil | 29 Comments »

Posted on 24 February 2010 by David Harry

Just a ranting and rambling search geek.... Web gypsy and renaissance man! When not losing what's left o' me mind here, I can be found blogging on the Fire Horse Trail and hanging wid me peeps at the SEO Training Dojo

has written 19 articles for SEO Bullshit

  • http://seoaware.com/ Melissa – SEO Aware

    I thought it was clear years ago that LSI was bull! I wrote about it in 2007…all bull. Shocked people still believe in it or sell it while knowing it is bull!

  • http://www.greatwebsitesblog.com/ Barry Adams

    I'd only ever heard of LSI in passing here and there before I read this post. Thanks for warning me – no bad LSI habit to unlearn and can avoid picking them up now. :P

  • http://sebastians-pamphlets.com/ Sebastian

    Erm … LSI, Google…

  • http://www.huomah.com theGypsy

    Sadly I was doin a little Google dorking around and found there is still plenty of that chatter around to this day. It goes without saying that they use semantic analysis, but we have no idea which flavour nor even combination's are in play. Then add in natural language processing elements…and well.. U get the idea.

    It just drives me nuts when peeps put the label on it to simply cash-in or look all fancy pants…hehe… It does (still) need to be stamped out.

  • PokerSEO

    Man its just astounding what crap is still out there after all the industry has been through.

    Oh and I'm still waiting for the “SEO is Bullshit… OR is it?” post lol – Outrank the assclown all the SEO's linked to

  • Alissa M

    Love your cut the bull style but you should read all of the stuff in the posts you label as 'crap worth nuking'. One of those posts appears to be AGREEING with you.

  • http://www.huomah.com theGypsy

    hehe… have no fear I still have me sights set on that fucker. Hopefully I can think something up over the weekend. Prolly want to find something linkable to it…. need to sort the right hook, oui?

  • http://www.huomah.com theGypsy

    Actually some did take the stance, but at the same time did nothing but (IMHO) target the phrase or talk about it to sound bright. Look at the Stomper Vid, it says LSI is BS, but the analysis is wrong and the history lesson as well (aka the Phrase Based IR patents cited, which are not LSI).

    Point being that I am more talking about search peeps blowing smoke out their arses using a catch phrase. In agreeance or not, the story needs to be properly told. No one discusses the WHY enough nor address more important issues, such as potential semantic analysis methods that might be in use. In short, without some knowledge of the space (IR) and a history lesson in hand (where the whole G/LSI train started) then for god's sake, just leave the topic alone.

    Ya know? It's not always about the blatant ignorance and snake oil. Merely talking authoritatively from a limited knowledge set is wrong. I question the motives of ANYONE that talks about LSI & Goog… (including me? erm… what's my angle? Oh yea, getting rid of BULLSHIT).

    I just want peeps to refer to it as 'Google possibly uses X variations of semantic analysis' – but I guess that doesn't sound as sexy… not something that can be packaged and sold….sigh…

  • http://www.ristvinmarketing.com/ Jim

    You might want to go to http://ezseonews.com/downloads/Google-Authority… and see what Dr Andy Williams of ezseonews has to say about this…

  • http://www.huomah.com theGypsy

    Why would I? The onus is on the peeps pushing this crap to PROVE that this is the case. Or stop selling it. That's simple science… they must make a case and present associated data for peer review.

    And hey, 1 page into his presentation he quotes the Google press release with,

    “”This acquisition will enable Google to create new technologies that make online advertising more useful to users, publishers, and advertisers alike.”

    Erm… see that? ASVERTISERS. It was purchased for ADSENSE.

    He then continues to talk about themes and manages to work the term LSI in another few dozen times. And shit, while we're at it, let's look at his so called data that makes the case for his personal 'theming' solutions. At no time are the signals isolated to any reasonable degree, nor is the data set large enough to be worth much of anything. But hey, that's a rant coming soon (SEO testing is bullshit).

    Anyway, that PDF is just more ignorance of semantic analysis and IR… that rides the LSI coat tails. Nice… sigh… this is why it all gets so frustrating.

  • melnelson

    Yes he has a lot to say, but not much of it makes good sense, so I agree with Dave – anyone who talks in a knowledgeable manner without really knowing what they are talking about are spouting Bullshit, which is what this site is all about.

    Kudos Dave – keep the bullshit debunking coming

  • Webnauts

    I thought LSI is the abbreviation for “Lame Search Idea”. Or did I miss something again?

  • http://www.making8seo.com/ Adam J. Humphreys

    Semantic indexing indeed, “Below are the most common keywords Google found when crawling your site. These should reflect the subject matter of your site,” when in the Google Webmaster Tools interface. Also keep in mind the synonyms currently being highlighted more progressively on the Google SERP (especially personalized search). We can call it what ever we want it's all semantics! End of the day it's about focusing on the appropriate KPI for top ROI. As long as there's relevancy, and authority there should be conversions. You can have a #1 ranked site, and still suck if you're not optimizing it right for conversions, and relevancy. People tend to focus on a lot of the wrong things.

  • http://www.huomah.com theGypsy

    lol… always good to C ya bro… long time.

  • http://www.huomah.com theGypsy

    While I agree to a degree (oooh lyrical) we can't forget;

    http://www.searchenginejournal.com/conversions-…

    And yes, I have no problems with SEOs talking about how search engines deal with semantic analysis, NLP, ML whateva'… it's when they try to capitalize on buzz terms they obviously don't fully understand. Or when they do, still feel the need to push their shit/build authority on said catch phrases.

    Search engines have evolved…we need to as well. We need to be more open about what we don't know. And we need to know more. :0)

  • http://www.making8seo.com/ Adam J. Humphreys

    I read that article a while ago it was a good one. UBC's Web Analytics course talks a lot about the business aspects of analytics especially the KPI. I had pretty good focus before going into the program, but I can genuinely helped a lot. My only complaint about the program so far is the dated references when there's so many new ones to reference (we're talking 4-7 years old however relative they might be today).

  • http://www.seoaly.com/ Alysson

    I <3 theGypsy! Sorry…just had to get that out. I feel better now. :)

    More on topic, it's yet another “buzz term” that SEO douchebags use to freak people the fuck out and somehow prove they're smarter than they actually are. I can only imagine it goes something like this: “Oh, you don't know about Latent Semantic Indexing? Boy, do you need to hire me. I know all about it and without it your whole online world will come crashing down upon your virtual head causing your entire business going bankrupt, your children to starve and your competitors to laugh as they crush you under their mighty weight. Because they ALL know what LSI is and they're using it against you every single second of every single day…”

    SHENANIGANS! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8VlLn7P2LU

  • http://www.seoaly.com/ Alysson

    I swear to God I'm going to pistol whip the next fucker to use an acronym.

  • http://www.making8seo.com/ Adam J. Humphreys

    KPI is an extremely common business term. I appologise if learning insults you. Real search professionals go the extra mile to help their clients by continuous education. it's the kaisan philosophy, and you can look that up too.

  • http://jesperastrom.com Jesper Åström

    I like all acronyms starting with the letter L (LCD, LSD, LOL and so on) so I'll continue using it when I discuss semantics and Google.

    Laughs and link baits aside, I think that the strongest argument against LSI being the type of retrieval method of Google is that it is mainly used for unstructured data sets. The web is all but unstructured. Both with regards to links between pages, URI's and nowadays also (dare I say it…) social relationships.

    There is simply no need to use LSI, especially not when determining page authority or relationship to other content online.

    Where LSI would make sense is when you match a search query with content on a page. Perhaps one could argue that this is what Google is using our search history for. But.. I think that is a waste of time as a sequential analysis of searches made within one search session would be a much stronger way of analyzing what we are truly looking for.

    Pistol whipping aside… good to see some real brains in the comment section of this blog post… lol…

  • Pingback: Proof That Google Does Not Use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) | hugoguzman.com

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  • Jacqueline Michael

    lol! I was suppose to write about LSI & then came upon your page. Now I have to spin my article another way around.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JP6SPXCXD25WAH57P5BGH6IQ34 Firman

    testing …. ;)

  • Terry7898

    lol… Cool article! Thanks for sharing.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001292521304 Brandy Cross

    I just had someone tell me that I have to know how to use LSI if I want to continue to work for them because someone they know just told them it’s necessary…. Im going to send your article.

  • http://www.redalien.co.uk/ James Cambridge

    Brilliant so glad i just found this as just had an indian agency email me asking if id heard of ‘the new LSI’ I how i need to adopt the methods or drop down the search engines.
    I pointed them to this post, cheers

  • Travis

    Great post… It made me want to rant too. I blame it on warrior forum: fueling the internet with bullshit! 99.99% of the garbage on their WSO is all BS. If you are looking for a shortcut, you are the reason Google needs to update the algorithm with updates like Penguin and Panda. Why do people buy into these hokey, made for TV types of deals? Baffles my mind.

  • Travis

    I just thought to myself it may not be warrior forum, they are just the delivery method. If they were not there, it would get posted elsewhere. The point is, just read the webmaster guide and stop the mayhem. If you dont like to read boring shit, hire and SEO that will.