Categorized Search | Digital Marketing Tutorial

Search Engines’ Dilemma

As digital content continues to expand at a dizzying pace, search engine indexes continue to expand as well, but the search engines are hard pressed to include the most relevant results in the first 1-3 pages of search results, especially for single word searches and/or very common search phrases.

The search engine companies know that something has to be done to help the searcher find what he/she is looking for, and a logical next step is to start categorizing these search results by those items certain search results have in common.

The Categorization Concept

The basic concept is the same with all search engines delivering categorized search results – instead of returning a single very long list of prioritized search results, these engines add a second layer of interpretation to their search results.

Each search engine has a different name for this additional layer of search results information, but again, the basic concept is the same – in addition to returning a single long list of search results, these search engines also “group” or “categorize” the search results first by their relation to one another, then by the priority each result has earned within its assigned category.

Teoma and Yippy Search Engines

Two of the best examples of this style of search results are provided by these second tier search engines:

Teoma.com (owned by Ask.com)

Yippy.com (originally Clusty.com)

Example: Yippy Search Engine

The latest iteration of this concept is Yippy.com and provides a good way to demonstrate what clustering, as this search engine terms it, is all about.

1. Go to yippy.com

2. In the search box enter the term “cars” without the quotation marks

3. Perform the search

Yippy Results for a Popular Search Term

Now let’s take a close look at the search results returned. First, you’ll notice that there are A LOT of search results returned for this search term – as of late 2020, almost 1.2 BILLION Web pages in the Yippy search index have some level of relevance to the term “cars”, and this search index is small compared to the indices of the major search engines like Google.

What’s REALLY interesting about this search results page is what’s in the LEFT column – “clusters” or categories of search results. Click on the “+” sign next to the first category and you’ll see that there are actually sub-categories listed below the major cluster.

Doesn’t this search results concept make more sense than trying to present the 30 most relevant search results for a very general search term in the first 3 pages of search results?

Categories to The Rescue!

The categories are designed to help direct the searcher down the most relevant search path by presenting the searcher with the next most logical search paths to follow. In essence, the search engine has added the next most logical keywords to the initial search word (“cars” becomes “cars reviews”, “cars model”, etc.) and presented them as categories to help the searcher keep “drilling down” into the search results.

Logic Behind Categorization

The real trick to presenting categorized search results is to make the categories presented for a given search term the next most logical search paths for that term. This is no small feat and is why categorized search has not taken off sooner, but as the search algorithms get better, the ability to present a set of relevant categorized search results continues to improve.

Search Categories and YOUR Web Site

How does this search concept of categorizing search results relate to optimizing YOUR Web site pages?

As you perform your search engine optimization process, you should take a look at the search results for your keyword phrases in one of these categorizing search engines.

In particular, you should note what major categories you want YOUR optimized pages to appear in, and then make sure that the category names used in the search results are included in your “on the page” optimization efforts.

Search Engine Trends – Return to Search Engines Trends Page

Note: My name is Dave Ingalls. If you need help with your SEO and/or Digital Marketing tasks, please review the B2B SEO Services and B2B Digital Marketing Services I offer.