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03.17.09 Understand The Use Of Natural Language Optimization  By
Joe Hall
Not long ago we got word that a new search engine will launch in May that will rely heavily on Natural Language Processing (NLP). And we have even heard Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, hint that the search giant would be implementing a greater emphasis on NLP: Wouldn't it be nice if Google understood the meaning of your phrase rather than just the words that are in that phrase? We have a lot of discoveries in that area that are going to roll out in the next little while. (via) As search marketers it's important that we stay on top of the world of search technologies and trends. Therefore I thought it would be a good idea to learn the basis of NLP. For this I have turned to a true expert in the field. Marie-Claire Jenkins (a.k.a CJ) is completing a PhD in Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence at the University of East Anglia. She is an extremely seasoned SEO who has worked with corporate clients on all things related to search. You can learn more about CJ by visiting her web site Science for SEO. What follows is my interview with CJ about Natural Language Processing: Joe: Can you define Natural Language Processing for the layman? CJ: It is the area of computing that deals with words. Words form texts, texts form collections of many texts, leading to an awful lot of words. This "bag of words" needs to be analyzed so that a machine can make sense of them. If it can't, there is no way of retrieving information from the texts and so they are in effect useless.
Linguistic analysis is used to analyze and represent the texts. Once the computer can represent the language in some way (patterns, reoccurring words, synonymy…) the information in the texts can be manipulated. This mimics the human understanding of language. NLP is a sub field of artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. A little history… NLP was first used in 1948 for use in a look-up dictionary at Birkbeck College in London. The code-breakers from the 2nd World War were highly interested as this was a new thing to work on now the war was over. Machine translation was actually the 1st research area involving NLP in the 1950's, a problem that has still not been solved today. NLP uses a wealth of research done by linguists such as Noam Chomsky, John Fillmore who revolutionized the way we search for patterns in language which is what NLP is all about. Research has since continued and improvements have been made. It is a very old area of research, and an extremely difficult one. The double helix has been discovered, quantum mechanics, the radar, kidney dialysis machines, man has walked on the moon…but the problem of NLP has not yet been solved, although there have been some breakthroughs. This how hard it is. Joe: Are there any examples of NLP in our daily life, online or off, that can help us understand this technology a bit more? Continue reading this article.
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