Attention Economy
The internet has transformed into a superfluous repository of information in the present era. Consequently, this information overload is causing a deficit or a scarcity of attention. Now if you are not quite familiar with the usage of the word “attention” in the context of this discussion, it simply refers to consumption of information.
Herbert Simon has quite elegantly pointed out that, “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Thus, a need arises out of obvious causes to mine and efficiently allocate this information to its intended audience.
Attention and Economy may be two diverse terms but in the modern times is naturally amalgamating, with one becoming highly interdependent on the other. Let us consider an example to show you exactly how attention affects economy.
Personalized Search and Artificial Intelligence
Ever wondered to think between the lines of your online searches? The sweet transition from a search request page to the search results page has been taken for granted by most of us. Probably, we are living in an era where we are using search engines at the slightest pretexts to find an instant solution to any problem. So much so, that search engines are now coming up with technology that will help personify our search results.
Whenever you submit your search query to a search engine looking for relevant results or information, the strings of data that comprise your search query is matched against keywords that are referenced by a website or by a particular web page. Conventionally, such information is already mined by search bots in advance. More or less, conventional search engines technically function as mentioned and dynamically generate your desired page comprising of your search results.
With advanced forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI) concepts being seamlessly integrated in programs that power search engines, the present scenario is evolving or rather, has already evolved. Whenever you initiate a search, every data associated with your search query is stored in the search engine’s database. This data is then referenced and cross referenced further with related searches that have been performed by you, or by other individuals. The search engines index this information and intelligently arrange them in order of maximum relevance, all on the account of the search history available. Some search engines may even use a history of searches to create knowledge bases in order to improve the efficiency of the AI based search engine.
Yes, I am talking about the basic principles of personalized search. Against a particular search keyword, the search results that might be relevant to you might be not be for another individual! Personalized search is all about delivering information that only you can relate to as an individual.
SEO in Organic and Inorganic Forms
Search Engine Optimization or SEO, now days, has become a very important and crucial part of online marketing. Most of the web users depend on these popular search engines in order to have an answer to their queries. In such circumstances, it is very important for the website owners to market their online ventures properly by the help of the search engine marketing services. These marketing services help websites to secure a higher order of ranking in the search results.
Marketing through search engines can be done in usually two ways, namely organic SEO and inorganic SEO. Organic SEO, as the name suggests, is nothing but the natural way for optimizing a website in the search engine pages. Since, this does not involve any sort of monetary transaction, good content of the web page full of creativity and relevance is of utmost importance. Another thing that one should keep in mind while using organic SEO is that, the content should continue to advance according to the need of the people searching the net. Moreover, optimization of this kind helps the websites to achieve a higher order of ranking for a longer period of time. This means that organic SEO has a natural, long-term impact. However, the only shortcoming here is that one might have to wait for over a month or so in order to “see” the desired results i.e. to get one’s website ranked higher in the search engine pages for a particular search criterion.
Chrome out of Beta
Google’s chrome is officially out of beta. Well, that’s a surprise. Google, who has been famous to keep it’s products in beta status for long like gmail (still running in beta even after 5 years of it’s launch), has released Chrome out of Beta in just 100 days. With the 15th update of the browser, ...
Latent Symantec Indexing
In some of my previous posts, I have discussed about the factors that help in getting a site optimized to the highest rank in the Google search pages. Today we will be discussing about the ranking algorithms that Google uses to find the relevant results for your search query. The latest on the block being ...
Meta Tags in Sitecore
I know there is a META tag module but based on our SEO requirements we had to implement it differently. We defined attributes in the base template which will hold values for the META tags.
Then in our base layout we retrieved values from the current item in to the meta tag definitions.
Should Google Earth be censored?
Should Google earth be censored? This question has been going around for quite a few years and now after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month, a petition has been submitted in the country’s high court by legal advocates to blur sensitive areas such as Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Google Earth.
According to the TIMES report, the petition says that Google Earth “aids terrorists in plotting attacks” and offers “absolutely no control to prevent misuse or limit access” of the services. Investigation to Mumbai terror attacks and interrogation of the only live terrorist reveal that the terrorists used GPS and other high tech tools to plot, execute and then monitor the attacks with ease.
This is not the first time when Google Earth has been asked to blur the satellite images of the sensitive areas. In 2005, Australian officials asked to remove the pictures of their only nuclear reactor Lucas Heights from Google Earth. In 2006, Bahrain officials barred Google Earth, and China too banned websites that sold unapproved images. Some countries like Holland have gone into an agreement to block or censor the sensitive areas especially their military bases. Some countries have even concealed their sensitive military bases by putting them underground. According to a USA Today report, some countries like India can detect when a satellite passes overhead and conduct sensitive military activities accordingly so that the satellites do not capture the images of these activities. Even in USA, google mappers and google street view photographers were banned from accessing Pentagon and other military bases.
