Novice Question - Can Browsers realistically distinguish words within concatenated strings e.g. text55fun or should one use text-55-fun? What about foreign languages especially more obscure ones like Finnish which Google Translate often miss-translates?

[ny60]

I am attempting to understand what is realistically possible within Google, Yahoo and Bing as they search websites for KeyWords. Technically my understanding is that they should be able to distinguish common words within concatenated strings, although there can be confusion between word boundaries when ambiguity is involved. So in the simple example of text55fun, do search engines actually distinguish text, 55 and fun separately? There are practical processing, databased and algorithm limitations that might turn a technically possible solution into a unrealistic one at a commercial scale.

What about more ambiguous strings like stringsstrummingstrongly  would that be parsed as string s strummings trongly or strings strummings trongly or strings strumming strongly? Does one need to use dashes or underscores to make it unambiguous to the search engine? My guess is that the engine would recognize the dash or space and better understand the word boundaries yet ignore the dash or underscore from an overall concatenated string perspective.

Thanks in advance to whoever can provide any insight to an old coder who is new to this field.

[ThompsonPaul]

The problem here,. as I see it, NY60, is that there's no way of knowing for sure. The engines are "supposed" to be able to parse the text strings, but there's no way they're infallible and in fact there's no way of knowing if they're even acceptably good at it under the conditions that are important to you.

For that reason, I always opt to make it as hard as possible for the engines to goof. In this case, that means dividing at word boundaries with a hyphen in strings like URLs and other code. Spaces are problematic because they often get encoded into html entity %20 which can cause yet more havoc - though in straight content like meta-titles, meta-descriptions, alt text and page content they are fine.

There's my $0.02. Whattaya think?

Paul

[Raydon]

take this, for random names and brands, they may not even recognize it proper and find the next best guess to it...

ever try googling a brand new online site / brand that is an abstract name? you get corrections and suggestions?

NOT ADVISED to make text sticktogetherlikethis in ANY language. it's just a best practice. across the board, content and url.

As Paul said, I do not like the whole "goofing" around situation with machine learning and Google's current artificial intel. its not nearly perfect technology and you can be its statistical miss...

[ny60]

Paul,

Thanks very much for the prompt response - I love your part of Canada by the way - and have driven through your town on the way to Jasper a number of time. I think that It's the most majestic part of the Rockies one can see without a plane.

Your response is at the heart of my question - the difference between what is possible and practical, particularly at the speed in which response occur. I wasn't aware of the space issue, very good point!

As a variation, were the concatenated string to become part of a URL for an original content-rich website, it sounds as though both the dashed and un-dashed URL would be required to be safe (because people tend not to type dashes or forget). In that event, would it matter to the search engines which URL is 301 redirected?

Again, thanks very much

Newell

[ny60]

Omid,

Thanks very much for the fast response.

Totally agree about about Google AI - my objective is completely white hat, original content-rich website which their AI encompasses - Google is attempting to weed out folks who are avoiding the hard work associated with building these types of websites.

Not everything in business has a brand-building goal - only so many brands can rise to the top. I'm looking from a very different perspective in this case and would be very happy to find my 1,000 to 5,000 specific people or so. From that point, I would then have my work cut out from a business standpoint, nothing to do with SEO or anything related to this field. Just simple blocking and tackling - sales,customer service, marketing, delivery etc.

I'm an old-school guy (sell high-value, high-margin products and services to customers who value you and want to stay with you over long periods of time because of great customer service) and this is an experiment for me using a new-school sales tactic. In my experience it does not take a lot of those types of customers to build a very nice small business. The really hard part is actually creating the organization which genuinely delivers on those commitments consistently over long periods of time and retains those customers.

All the best

Newell