{"id":95,"date":"2017-06-20T07:43:12","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T07:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/?p=95"},"modified":"2017-06-20T09:35:43","modified_gmt":"2017-06-20T09:35:43","slug":"wordpress-search-engine-optimization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/2017\/06\/20\/wordpress-search-engine-optimization\/","title":{"rendered":"WordPress Search Engine Optimization"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>I asked <a href=\"http:\/\/MA.TT\">MA.TT<\/a> a question \u2013 of course it&#8217;s complicated, but it definitely has something to do with the three-letter-acronym (TLA) called SEO:<\/h3>\n<p><iframe width='640' height='360' src='https:\/\/videopress.com\/embed\/Bs6Zb1pE?hd=0' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen><\/iframe><script src='https:\/\/v0.wordpress.com\/js\/next\/videopress-iframe.js?m=1435166243'><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>As I indicated in my question, this has nothing to do with Google and\/or similar proprietary (\u201csecret\u201d) algorithms. I was talking about WordPress <em>as a <strong>search engine<\/strong><\/em>.<\/h3>\n<h3>IMO Matt&#8217;s response \/ answer was <strong>excellent<\/strong>. It underscores how <em>challenging<\/em> such a project might be. Yet Matt also emphasized (during the interview with Om) that <strong><em>text<\/em><\/strong> will continue to be of central importance to the way the World-Wide Web works (and will continue to work). As an addendum to Matt&#8217;s insight, let me note that any kind of artificial intelligence initiatives will always be a matter of <em>pattern recognition<\/em>, and the patterns that they attempt to recognize will always be text, a written representation of something (e.g. spoken language), etc.<\/h3>\n<h3>Since my time for asking such a question was limited, I couldn&#8217;t go into many details. Even here, I do not want to bore you with the pros and cons of hitchhiking along on other people&#8217;s websites. As I have written in previous posts, the foundations for quite satisfactory information retrieval (aka \u201csearch\u201d) are already present on the so-called (WP) <strong>PLATFORM<\/strong>.<\/h3>\n<h3>At this point, I would like to try to elucidate at least one part of what I was talking about when I mentioned that an information-retrieval system need not necessarily be a one-size fits-all solution. People who have been following my writing for a long time know that this is a \u201cpet peave\u201d of mine, which I mention time and again. Note also that during Om Malik&#8217;s interview with Matt Mullenweg, the two also discussed McDonalds (TM). I find the use of brand names such as McDonalds or Google or Tupperware or whatever intriguing \u2013 is this a good or a bad thing? IDK&#8230; \u2013 but I digress.<\/h3>\n<h3>The point I want to underscore especially emphatically here is that WordPress isn&#8217;t simply a \u201csoftware\u201d or an \u201capp\u201d. It is also a community which also involves a lot of people who have a great deal of <strong><em>natural<\/em> intelligence<\/strong>. There are many points of view. There are many approaches. And just as there are many roads to Rome, so too there are many possible solutions to information retrieval (\u201csearch\u201d) technology which are possible, viable, etc.<\/h3>\n<h3>Let me give a couple examples beyond the ones I mentioned when I asked Matt the question in Paris (at the <a href=\"https:\/\/2017.europe.wordcamp.org\/\">2017 WordCamp Europe<\/a> conference). The examples I mentioned of how \u201cevery website is a search engine\u201d both came from the wordpress.com website. There are certainly many more examples possible from this website, but I chose to highlight <a href=\"https:\/\/discover.wordpress.com\/\">discover.wordpress.com<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.com\/tags\/\">wordpress.com\/tags<\/a> as premier examples. In my opinion, these two search options show two different kinds \/ levels of community engagement.<\/h3>\n<h3>Likewise, there are also many search capabilities available to self-hosted wordpress sites. The most straightforward of these is undoubtedly the search widget (a \u201csearch box\u201d in which the search text is entered and then searched). This is a very simple algorithm, and it is primarily useful for \u201cknown item\u201d searches \u2013 for example, if you already know the title of a post or a string of words inside the post content. Normally, this search box does not search many other fields, such as the the tag field or comments. However, a site&#8217;s registered users can search these fields via the \u201cbackend\u201d portion of the WordPress software. In this sense, each site has more search functions (and functionality) available to registered members&#8230; and therefore also offers higher levels of capabilities to more engaged users.<\/h3>\n<h3>Note also that such different levels of capabilities are also part and parcel of the distinction between tags and categories (with respect to the primary function of information <em>storage<\/em> \u2013 which is the basis for later information <em>retrieval<\/em> capabilities): while in a standard WordPress implementation many users are able to create tags for posts, only a rather limited set of users are capable of creating categories for posts. Of course expert site administrators can configure such settings (which may be good, but having reliable standards also makes <em>learning how to use<\/em> WordPress easier for new users).<\/h3>\n<h3>In my opinion, community engagement is also probably also the crux of WordPress search engine optimization across sites. For example, it might be important to distinguish between different meanings for the same string \u2013 e.g. \u201cdevelopment\u201d might mean very different things in different settings \/ contexts (such as with respect to software, economics and psychology). I think it might make a lot of sense for WordPress to provide support for the development (no pun intended \ud83d\ude09 ) of sub-communities within the greater WordPress community \u2013 and thereby to enable people to share, exchange and review each other&#8217;s ideas, to set these ideas into their appropriate contexts, etc. Indeed, there is a long tradition of abstracting and indexing in scientific literature \u2013 and learning from decades (if not even centuries) of experience and insights might be a very good thing to do.<\/h3>\n<h3>One recurring theme I heard repeated throughout the WordCamp Europe conference in Paris time and again was the notion of how WordPress functions as a community of engaged people. This aspect of community engagement is definitely a very strong advantage of WordPress with respect to search engine optimization. Another is the very strong foundation of \u201c<strong>open source<\/strong>\u201d ethics \u2013 which I also described in my previous post.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I asked MA.TT a question \u2013 of course it&#8217;s complicated, but it definitely has something to do with the three-letter-acronym (TLA) called SEO: As I indicated in my question, this has nothing to do with Google and\/or similar proprietary (\u201csecret\u201d) &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/2017\/06\/20\/wordpress-search-engine-optimization\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[327],"tags":[168,444,441,223,191,442,443,445,446,447,451,56,452,390,349,448,450,449,460,458,456,457,459,461,393,394,28,462,300,454,455,453,463,192,351,350,202,203,370],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9w79D-1x","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":77,"url":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/2017\/05\/11\/blogs-are-born-free-yet-everywhere-they-are-in-seo\/","url_meta":{"origin":95,"position":0},"title":"Blogs are born free, yet everywhere they are in SEO","author":"nmw","date":"May 11, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"You might think I sound like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but I can assure you there is no need to go back that far in time. Are you old enough to remember the case of Trent Lott? Or how about \u201cmiserable failure\u201d? Are you even aware that Google ever cleansed the web?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;impost&quot;","block_context":{"text":"impost","link":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/topicat\/org\/org-impost\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":191,"url":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/2019\/12\/23\/automatism-automaticity-20th-century\/","url_meta":{"origin":95,"position":1},"title":"Automatism + Automaticity \u2013 20th Century","author":"nmw","date":"December 23, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"If you thought my previous introduction was dark, then if you use your imagination a little to color in the details of what comes next, then you may actually begin to lose your faith in humanity \u2013 but I choose to spare you such sketches, because I myself don't even\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;remediary&quot;","block_context":{"text":"remediary","link":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/topicat\/com\/com-remediary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":84,"url":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/2017\/06\/02\/why-the-scientific-method-and-open-source-are-some-of-the-best-things-since-sunlight\/","url_meta":{"origin":95,"position":2},"title":"Why the Scientific Method and Open Source are Some of the Best Things Since Sunlight","author":"nmw","date":"June 2, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"About 100 years ago, some guy named Louis Brandeis apparently said something like: Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Mr. Brandeis was speaking metaphorically (his statement was made in the context of a book titled \u201cOther People's Money and How the Bankers Use it\u201d). There are in fact other phenomena which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;impost&quot;","block_context":{"text":"impost","link":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/topicat\/org\/org-impost\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":72,"url":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/2017\/05\/02\/mobile-first-is-a-special-case-of-reading-first\/","url_meta":{"origin":95,"position":3},"title":"Mobile First is a Special Case of Reading First","author":"nmw","date":"May 2, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Several years ago, there was a push towards \u201cmobile first\u201d publishing \u2013 the idea being that more and more people were using their mobile phones as their primary reading device. The optimization of web content for constraints inherent in mobile technology (be that bandwidth or limited computational resources) is something\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;impost&quot;","block_context":{"text":"impost","link":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/topicat\/org\/org-impost\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":158,"url":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/2019\/07\/09\/re-on-bullshit\/","url_meta":{"origin":95,"position":4},"title":"RE: On Bullshit","author":"nmw","date":"July 9, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"A friend of mine recently mentioned he has back-ordered \u201cOn Bullshit\u201d (by Harry Frankfurt) and I thought \u201coh neat \u2013 maybe I can borrow it sometime for a day or two\u201d... but then I realized something. Bullshit is not rare or special or in any way particular. It is widespread.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;remediary&quot;","block_context":{"text":"remediary","link":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/topicat\/com\/com-remediary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":185,"url":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/2019\/12\/21\/automatism-automaticity-first-thoughts\/","url_meta":{"origin":95,"position":5},"title":"Automatism + Automaticity \u2013 First Thoughts","author":"nmw","date":"December 21, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Automatism and automaticity are \u201creal concepts\u201d, but they are not widely used \u2026 or at least not widely used everywhere in the same way. One of the fields where these concepts are most widely used is in the broad field of medicine (or even more broadly biology). Here, the conceptual\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;remediary&quot;","block_context":{"text":"remediary","link":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/topicat\/com\/com-remediary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98,"href":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions\/98"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pro.freezine.org\/remediary0com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}