Researchers have used the eponymous search engine, Google, to define in images what the English language looks like (and apparently it looks like a Jackson Pollack painting.) The study has used images from the search engine and ranking computer technology to collect the most commonly associated images fro each word of the English language. Interestingly the use of the Google in this study probably holds some of the Keys for the future of Search technology, and of course SEO as a subject.
Images already for a part of the search engines logarithm, but the development of a visual dictionary which could recognize an image and relate that image to a word without a word tag, would mean that web sites and of course SEO policy would have to update to include a visual element as well. Imagine a search engine that would look truly at all of the elements of a post or page, the words, their semantics and meanings, and the imagery used, to rank that pages usefulness to the searcher.
This, with the advent of the visual dictionary, does not seem to be at all unlikely, nor indeed, too far in the future. So far the research carried out by Linguist at MIT (home of the grandfather of all linguistics, Noam Chomsky) have not talked about the commercial applications of the project, but the use of Google as the medium by which the images were sourced, whilst unsurprising, smacks of a potential Google application of the work.
Where does this leave SEO, well if images are used by a search engine in designating relevance the job of SEO writer will truly become one of SEO Designer utilizing the visual dictionary to design relevant and searchable images. Watch this space for more information.
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