Hello
and welcome to this blog dedicated to Co-Citation and how it applies to
SEO and the world of Google. Please feel free to email me and
contribute and of course feel free to cite what you see!
What is "co-citation" and what does it mean for
SEO?
First let’s define co-citation:
Here is a description of Co-citation (The artist previously known as “Bibliographic coupling”) fromWikipedia. Although I don’t
find this to be the best description it will provide you with some basics. I will present other descriptions, points of
view and examples of what co-citation is and how it applies to Search Engines,
SEO and Google specifically, especially PageRank.
Here is an excellent, though scientific and dry, explanation of
co-citation from a great paper on the subject.
“In published journal articles, there are always some papers or books
that are cited as references
for the concepts or ideas presented in them. These cited references are
used to refer the reader to
the relevant papers for further reading on the concepts and ideas that
are introduced in the source
paper. They reveal how the source paper is linked to the prior relevant
research on the assumption that citing and cited references have a strong link through semantics.
They provide a valuable
source of information and directives for researchers in the exchange of
ideas, the current trends and the future development in their respective
fields. Therefore, citation indices can be used to facilitate the searching and
retrieval of information”.
Mining a Web Citation Database for authorco-citation Analysis - Yulan He, Siu Cheung Hui
Many SEO’s will think that this is some new aspect
to Google; a new trick to take advantage of to further the needs of their clients. Most people don’t realize that co-citations
are a fundamental part of Google since the beginning.
Larry Page, co-founder of Google and the “Page”
of PageRank says it best himself by originally calling PageRank “The PageRank Citation Ranking” way back in ’98. He went on to say: “The citation (link) graph
of the web is an important resource that has largely gone unused in existing
web search engines. We have created maps containing as many as 518 million of
these hyperlinks, a significant sample of the total. These maps allow rapid
calculation of a web page's "PageRank", an objective measure of its citation importance that
corresponds well with people's subjective idea of importance”. [emphasis added]
You see, the PageRank concept is fundamentally based
on citations. When a scientific paper is
written (many of you will remember this from high school, undergrad or grad
studies) you quote or “cite” other works.
Those other works obviously are of the same subject matter of which you’re
writing (or you wouldn’t be citing them) and therefore to be honorable about using
someone else’s work in your own, to give props to that person, and to lend
credibility to what you’re writing, you refer specifically to where you found
that delicious bit of information.
Now, back when we had to go to school up-hill
both ways in a blizzard and in shoes made of cardboard (you know… pre-Internet)
– all of those papers, scientific journals, etc, were just on paper or
microfiche or some other antiquated form of record keeping (stone tablets
anyone?). Once we started going online
we started pulling these papers and journals and documents online (stone tablets too). Now imagine the web, which is literally all
documents, images, sound files, etc, as being a mega library. With any library you need a card catalog or
essentially a way to categorize the content.
Well, one paper can be relevant to a lot of other categories… and this
is exactly what is the key behind Search Engines… the magic word… relevance! What makes something relevant is usage and
when you use, quote or cite another’s work in yours you’re creating a relevance
association with that work. You’re
telling people that it’s relevant to what you’re writing.
Therefore when you create that association and
someone else halfway across the country writes a paper and quotes the same
source in a similar way then they also create a relevance association. Now you both have just made that cited work
relevant to what you’re writing. The
person you’re citing doesn’t even need to mention what you’re writing
specifically to be considered relevant… you made them relevant by associating
them into what you’ve written. Imagine
now that 5,000 people also cite that same source in a similar way, in the same
subject matter… it makes that source highly relevant. Well, backlinking should not be looked at as
link-popularity but citations as it’s not a matter of popularity or simply
usage but relevant usage. That was the
concept behind PageRank, balanced with a number of on-page aspects from font
attributes to location, quantity of keyword usage, etc.
How does this affect SEO?
Well, Google didn’t expect people to be able to
manipulate their Search Engine… in a paper they co-authored Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote “This
allows for personalization and can make it nearly impossible to deliberately
mislead the system in order to get a higher ranking”. This we know was completely wrong and has in
fact created a massive industry called SEO.
Well, since backlinks were pretty easy to manipulate, on-page aspects
were easy to manipulate, even the quantity of content is easy to manipulate so
how does Google cut through the manipulated junk to provide truly relevant
results? Well we need to go back to the
card-catalog question. How do you manage
so much content and determine relevance?
Linking is a great way and you’ll still see linking as a part of Google
but it’s more than that. Google has
copies of billions of webpages in its indices and it can go through that
content at will. So think about it this
way… Google doesn’t really need hyperlinks to link things together as relevant. It just needs mentions.
It comes back to usage! This makes it actually much easier for
quality whitehat SEOs to generate rankings for their clients as you won’t need
to spend so much time and their money to get backlinks… now you can push
content! Go out there and talk about
your client! Get people to talk about
your client! Get your client’s brand
associated (physically) with their keywords.
Social is ideal for this (including Blogs!!!) as it spreads buzz and
gets people using your client’s brand and keywords. So now, instead of spending so much time and
money just getting backlinks… you can focus on getting the word out… link or
not. When people mention your client’s
brand and keywords, they’re citing them.
That’s what Google’s looking for!
And getting 1,000 mentions will be far easier and effective than getting
even 50 quality backlinks.
To prove my point that mere usage does work- one
of my favorite examples for the last 14 years is this:
Google the term “pet shop”. Up until about 5 years ago, you would always
see the top results for the term being the band The Pet Shop Boys. Why?
Because you never saw any other word USED in association with pet shop
more than the word boys. You don’t say “pet
shop dogs” or “pet shop cats”. Although
now other terms are used such as “pet shop games” and “pet shop movie” and
Google has modified its algorithm to account for the fact that someone putting
in Pet Shop is likely looking for an actual pet shop and not the band (as the quantity and usage of those terms like "food", "dog", etc are being caught by Google), you can
still do a Google search for “pet shop” and find the band’s site in the top 3
search engine results pages. The best
way to use that to one’s advantage is to use text such as “In our pet shop boys
and girls find the pet they’re looking for”.
This is truly relevant to the site but also takes advantage of an
established semantic association. No harm – no foul.
Now the thing to do is to look into the science
behind the process and how to position your mentions (citations) as best as
possible so that they work best for you and your clients.
Google’s Wonder Wheel… whatever happened to you
old friend?
Google launched its Wonder Wheel back in
2009. Wonder Wheel showed the contextual
relevance between a site and others but many didn’t realize that it was
actually simply just a co-citation cluster tool. The following image shows a screenshot of
Wonder Wheel while the second image shows a screenshot of a co-citation cluster
system. See any similarities?
More on this on my next post. See you soon!
~ Jeff Chance
~ Jeff Chance
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