Connecting the Dots

I have a startling discovery to share. The increase in online information is important. It’s going to change things. Get ready.

Right, we all get that. But, what does any of it mean? That’s what we, as PR practitioners, grapple with all the time right? In the initial phase of the Internet’s growth there was a natural fascination over the mounds of data that were suddenly at our fingertips. But, like anything else, we must evolve. The next frontier is intelligently (and efficiently) mining that data.

And, at the heart of it, it’s all about understanding connections.

This is already the backbone of SEO, and I stumbled across this video by a Google developer that explains their approach to SEO as it relates to news results.

It’s interesting stuff – particularly when you think about its broader importance. A news story breaks, everyone from the New York Times to your local mommy blogger is covering it, but who shows up 1^st in Google News result (which is the difference between thousands, even millions, of page views)? Well, that depends, and all hinges on connections. Is the mommy blogger linking to the NYT story as an authority? That matters. Is the mommy blogger based in the same town as where the news story actually took place? That matters. Has the outlet been identified as a trusted source over time by Google? That matters. So do a vast array of other factors like connected keywords in the article, section titles and how they connect with the story, etc. etc. Seeing a theme?

Which brings me to my next point: The News Dots Network.

This is a cool interactive tool created by Slate that maps out how stories connect to each other (Kevin Bacon is smiling somewhere). Interesting in itself, the idea behind this tool also provides some higher level insights around the concept of (you guessed it)… connections. When people are talking about X topic, do they tend to also talk to about Y? If so, a company can now tailor how they enter conversations not only by targeting specific areas of interest – but leveraging adjacent ones. When we can evolve from just discussing online information in terms of “how much,” and start connecting the dots, we become much better at our jobs.

Tagged as: google, news, SEO, Social Media