Information Technology for

Management

• Chapter 6: Internet Technologies and Search

Strategies

Prepared by Dr. Derek Sedlack, South University

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Learning Objectives
Using Organic
Search Search and
Technology Search
for Business Engine
Success Optimization

Pay-Per-
Recommendation Click and
Engines Paid Search
Strategies

A Search for
Meaning—
Semantic
Technology

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Using Search Technology for

Business Success
• How Search Engines Work
– Search Engine: an application for locating webpages
or other content on a computer network using
spiders.
– Spiders: web bots (or bots); small computer
programs designed to perform automated, repetitive
tasks over the Internet.
– Bots scan webpages and return information to be
stored in a page repository.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Using Search Technology for

Business Success

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Using Search Technology for

Business Success
• Web Directories
– Typically organized by categories.
– Webpage content is usually reviewed by directory
editors prior to listing.
– Page Repository: data structure that stores and
manages information from a large number of
webpages, providing a fast and efficient means for
accessing and analyzing the information at a later
time.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Using Search Technology for

Business Success

Figure 6.5 Components of crawler search engines (Grehan, 2002).

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Using Search Technology for

Business Success

Figure 6.6 Search engines use invested indexes to efficiently locate Web content based on
search query terms.
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Using Search Technology for

Business Success
• Why Search is Important for Business
– Enterprise search tools allow organizations to share
information internally.
– An organizations’ ability to share knowledge among
employees is vital to its ability to compete.
– Information is not always in the same format.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Using Search Technology for

Business Success
• Why Search is Important for Business
– Structured data: information with a high degree of
organization, such that inclusion in a relational
database is seamless and readily searchable by
simple, straightforward search engine algorithms or
other search operations.
– Unstructured data: “messy data” not organized in a
systematic or predefined way.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Using Search Technology for

Business Success
• Security Issues
– Limited access to certain data via job function or
clearance.
– Request log audits should be conducted regularly
for patterns or inconsistencies.
• Enterprise Vendors
– Used to treat data in large companies like Internet
data but include information management tools.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Using Search Technology for

Business Success
• Recommendation Engines
– Attempt to anticipate information users might be
interested in to recommend new products, articles,
videos, etc.
• Search Engine Marketing
– A collection of online marketing strategies and
tactics that promote brands by increasing their
visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs)
through optimization and advertising.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Using Search Technology for

Business Success
• Search Engine Marketing
– Basic search types:
• Informational search
• Navigational search
• Transactional search
– Strategies and tactics produce two outcomes:
• Organic search listings
• Paid search listings
– Pay-per-click (produce click-through rates)
• Social media optimization

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Search Combos

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Organic vs Paid

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Using Search Technology for

Business Success
• Mobile Search
– Technically configured mobile sites
– Content designed for mobile devices
• Business search
– Focused search
– Filetype
– Advanced search
– Search tools button
– Search history

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Using Search Technology for

Business Success
• Real-time Search
– Google Trends
– Google Alerts
– Twitter Search
• Social Bookmarking Search
– Page links tagged with keywords
• Specialty Search: Vertical Search
– Programmed to focus on webpages related to a
particular topic and to drill down by crawling pages
that other search engines are likely to ignore.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Using Search Technology for

Business Success
1. What is the primary difference between a web
directory and a crawler based search engine?
2. What is the purpose of an index in a search engine?
3. Describe the page-ranking method most commonly
associated with Google’s success.
4. What is the difference between search engine
optimization and PPC advertising?
5. Describe three different real-time search tools.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Learning Objectives
Using Organic
Search Search and
Technology Search
for Business Engine
Success Optimization

Pay-Per-
Recommendation Click and
Engines Paid Search
Strategies

A Search for
Meaning—
Semantic
Technology

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Organic Search and Search Engine

Optimization
• Search Engine Optimization
– Keyword conversion rates: the likelihood that using a
particular keyword to optimize a page will result in
conversions*.
– Ranking factors
• Reputation or popularity
– PageRank: Google’s algorithm based on the
assumption that people are more likely to link a
high-quality website than poor-quality site.
– Backlinks: external links that point back to a site.
• Relevancy
• User Satisfaction

Conversions: when a website visitor converts to a buyer

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Organic Search and Search Engine

Optimization
• Inbound marketing
– An approach to marketing that emphasizes SEO,
content Marketing, and social media strategies to
attract customers.
• Outbound marketing
– Traditional approach using mass media advertising.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
 In & Out

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Inbound Marketing Funnel

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Organic Search and Search Engine

Optimization
• Black Hat SEO
– Gaming the system or tricking search engines into
ranking a site higher than its content deserves.
1. Link spamming: generating backlinks toward SEO,
not adding user value.
2. Keyword tricks: embedded high-value keywords to
drive up traffic statistics.
3. Ghost text: text hidden in the background that will
affect page ranking
4. Shadow (ghost or cloaked) pages: created pages
optimized to attract lots of people through redirect.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Organic Search and Search Engine

Optimization
1. Search engines use many different “clues” about the quality of
a website’s content to determine how a page should be ranked
in search results. These clues fall into three primary categories:
Reputation or Popularity, Relevancy, and User Satisfaction.
Explain the rationale for using each of these three categories
as an indicator of a website’s content quality.
2. Backlinks were a key factor in Google’s original PageRank
algorithm. Explain what a backlink is and why Google has
reduced its emphasis on backlinks and instead uses many
other additional factors in its ranking algorithm?
3. Explain why so-called black hat SEO tactics are ultimately
short-sighted and can lead to significant consequences for
businesses that use them.
4. How do organizations evaluate the effectiveness of their search
engine optimization (SEO) strategies and tactics?
5. Explain why providing high quality, regularly updated content is
the most important aspect of any SEO strategy.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Learning Objectives
Using Organic
Search Search and
Technology Search
for Business Engine
Success Optimization

Pay-Per-
Recommendation Click and
Engines Paid Search
Strategies

A Search for
Meaning—
Semantic
Technology

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Pay-Per-Click and Paid Search

Strategies
• Pay-Per-Click
– PPC advertising campaigns:
1. Set an overall budget
2. Create ads
3. Select associated keywords
4. Set up billing account information

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Pay-Per-Click and Paid Search

Strategies
• Paid Search Advertising Metrics
– Click through rates (CTR): used to evaluate keyword
selection and ad copy campaign decisions.
– Keyword conversion: should lead to sales, not just
visits.
– Cost of customer acquisition (CoCA): amount of
money spent to attract a paying customer.
– Return on advertising spend (ROAS): overall
financial effectiveness.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Pay-Per-Click and Paid Search

Strategies
• Quality Score
– Determined by factors related to the user’s
experience.
• Expected keyword click-through-rate (CTR)
• The past CTR of your URL (web address)
• Past effectiveness
• Landing page quality
• Relevance of keywords to ads
• Relevance of keywords to customer search
• Ad performance on difference devices

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Pay-Per-Click and Paid Search

Strategies
1. What would most people say is the fundamental difference
between organic listings and PPC listings on a search
engine?
2. What are the four primary steps to creating a PPC
advertising campaign on search engines?
3. In addition to the “bid price” for a particular keyword, what
other factor(s) influence the likelihood that an
advertisement will appear on a search results page? Why
don’t search engines just rely on the advertisers bid when
deciding what ads will appear on the search results page?
4. How do webpage factors influence the effectiveness of PPC
advertisements?
5. Describe four metrics that can be used to evaluate the
effectiveness of a PPC advertising campaign.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Learning Objectives
Using Organic
Search Search and
Technology Search
for Business Engine
Success Optimization

Pay-Per-
Recommendation Click and
Engines Paid Search
Strategies

A Search for
Meaning—
Semantic
Technology

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

A Search for Meaning—Semantic

Technology
• Semantic Web
– Meaningful computing using metadata: application
of natural language processing (NLP) to support
information retrieval, analytics, and data-integration
that compass both numerical and “unstructured”
information.
• Semantic Search
– Process of typing something into a search engine
and getting more results than just those that feature
the exact keyword typed into the search box.
• Metadata
– Data that describes and provides information about
other data.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

A Search for Meaning—Semantic

Technology

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

A Search for Meaning—Semantic

Technology
• Web 3.0
– Developed by W3C.
– Resource description framework (RDF)
• Used to represent information about resources
– Web ontology language (OWL)
• Language used to categorize and accurately
identify the nature of Internet things
– SPARCQL protocol
• Used to write programs that can retrieve and
manipulate data scored in RDF
– RDF query language (SPARCQL)

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

A Search for Meaning—Semantic

Technology
• Semantic Search Features and Benefits
– Related searches/queries
– Reference results
– Semantically annotated results
– Full-text similarity search
– Search on semantic/syntactic annotations

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

A Search for Meaning—Semantic

Technology
• Semantic Search Features and Benefits
– Concept search
– Ontology-based search
– Semantic Web search
– Faceted search
– Clustered search
– Natural language search

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Evolution?

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

A Search for Meaning—Semantic

Technology
1. List five different practical ways that semantic
technology is enhancing the search experience of
users.
2. How do metadata tags facilitate more accurate search
results?
3. Briefly describe the three evolutionary stages of the
Internet?
4. Define the words “context,” “personalization,” and
“vertical search” and explain how they make for more
powerful and accurate search results.
5. What are the three languages developed by the W3C
and associated with the semantic Web?

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Learning Objectives
Using Organic
Search Search and
Technology Search
for Business Engine
Success Optimization

Pay-Per-
Recommendation Click and
Engines Paid Search
Strategies

A Search for
Meaning—
Semantic
Technology

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Recommendation Engines
• Recommendation Filters
– Content-based filtering: products based on product
features in past interactions.
– Collaborative filtering: based on user’s similarity to
other people.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Recommendation Engines
• Limitations of Recommendation Engines
– Cold start or new user: challenging since no starting
point or preexisting information exists.
– Sparsity: unable to create critical mass due to few
ratings or similar groups are unidentifiable.
– Limited feature content: manual information entry is
prohibitive where there are many products.
– Overspecialization: narrowly configured results may
only recommend the same item, but in different
sizes or colors.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 5

Recommendation Engines
• Hybrid Recommendation Engines
– Weighted hybrid: results from different
recommenders are assigned weight and combined
numerically to determined final recommendations.
– Mixed hybrid: results from different recommenders
presented along-side of each other.
– Cascade hybrid: results from different
recommenders assigned a rank or priority.
– Mixed hybrid: results from different recommenders
combines results from two recommender systems
from the same technique category.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6

Recommendation Engines
1. How is a recommendation engine different from a search
engine?
2. Besides e-commerce websites that sell products, what are
some other ways that recommendation engines are being
used on the Web today?
3. What are some examples of user information required by
recommendation engines that use collaborative filtering?
4. Before implementing a content-based recommendation
engine, what kind of information would website operators
need to collect about their products?
5. What are the four distinct methodologies used by
recommender systems to create recommendations?
6. What is a recommendation engine called that combines
different methodologies to create recommendations? What
are three ways these systems combine methodologies?

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.