It has long been noted that current search engine technology encourages the use of 'pidgin English' due to the enormous technical problems in understanding normal human speech. For example a particular question can be phrased in a hundred different ways -due to the nature of language itself, and compounded by regional and demographic variations. Tracking all possible variations is clearly a huge undertaking.

Most search engines understand the use of particular question words, such as 'what', 'why' and 'when' but can only approximate the actual intent of the questioner - which often leads to search results that do not reflect what the person was actually asking.

Many search users have become accustomed to this which has led to a form of shorthand language that is commonly used for search engine queries. For example the question a person might be seeking answer to is: "where can I find a good company in Yorkshire to market my website?" The query they might enter into a search engine might be: "website marketing company yorkshire."

Although the terms are superficially similar in their major themes, they might actually result in very different responses - and are skewed by the activities of search engine optimisers who target these 'pidgin English' queries in the form of keywords.

Further Reading

• http://www.powerset.com/