Latent Semantic Indexing | SEO Traffic Spider
To put in a layman’s terms, latent semantic indexing (LSI) is a technique of indexing— analyzing, listing or categorizing certain keywords or phrases in the contents of various websites, books or documents in such a way that they have contextually and conceptually the same or related intent and meaning despite the different words used in them.
The technique used in latent semantic indexing aims at finding the keywords in the text that carry a latent relationship in structure and usage. The idea behind the concept of LSI is to collect data that is conceptually akin in meaning and context to the search queries entered by the searchers in the search engines. The search results may, therefore not share the specific words or phrases entered by the searcher.
For example, if you use the word ‘Saddam Hussein’, the search engine may return articles about the Gulf War, situation in Kuwait or Iran, the elite force of the Iraqi despot, UN sanctions, oil fields in Iraq and much more without even mentioning the search word ‘Saddam Hussein’.
The technique of LSI automates the process of categorizing the documents almost the way the human beings do. The text selected may not have the same words or sentences. The results returned may have lists, free notes, web content or even emails.
Advantages of latent semantic indexing
Sometimes the web searcher is conscious that he is not using the right keywords or phrases due to the lack of knowledge of appropriate vocabulary. He, therefore, uses only approximate words which may not return the desired information if the search process follows the Boolean pattern. Latent semantic index technique facilitates the retrieval of the related conceptual content even if the search queries do not use the ‘correct’ words.
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Gary Harvey has been helping people make money online since 2000 through his 