Google Algorithm Starts Looking at Synonymous Words

I read a post today in the Official Google blog that actually made me think if this is a hint at how Google search results are going to change in future. The post is about the different experiments that Google does to improve its user experience and in between various UI related changes that they have discussed, they have included a small paragraph..

“Another class of experiments have to do with changes that are not purely visual, but rather involve changes to the underlying presentation algorithms. For instance, the algorithm that is responsible for the titles and snippets of result pages now highlights stems and some synonyms of the original query term. For the query [hp printer drivers] we will also return results that include and highlight the word “driver”.”

Now, we all know that Google has been using stemming for long. We have all seen examples where we search for “web designers” and it would highlight “Web design”, “Website design” and similar words which forms the stem for the searched keyword “web designers”. Then what is new in that paragraph above ?

They have mentioned..

“the algorithm that is responsible for the titles and snippets of result pages now highlights stems and some synonyms of the original query term.”

So now Google is planning to highlight synonyms as well. Which means if you are searching for “Consultant” , it would also probably highlight the terms “counselor” and “advisor”.

Once Google decides to roll out this completely in their algorithm that might cause a major movement in the SERPs and we are likely to see more thematic pages than keyword pages.

While the SEOs have not yet deciphered the use of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) ( whether it is at all used or not is still a question), if Google starts adding additional importance to synonymous words in its algorithm, that would probably give something more to the SEOs to think about and make it all the more difficult for spammers.