I use it all the time when I’m looking up stuff like deflation and zomg and so on, and you’ve probably used it yourselves a few times over. Of course, I’m talking about typing a search query in Google in the form: define:{word}. This brings up what Google believes to be definitions pertaining to that term. Now all in all it’s a great tool, but it has a seo potential. I’ve thought of this previously but it wasn’t until I stumbled upon a post that I have found out the steps to getting a google define listing (since we all know how useful such a link can be and can sometimes guarantee a conversion). I’ve looked through Google and they don’t seem to offer much of an answer to how the system works but it’s pretty common sense for the most part: Google looks for a dictionary-like definition and if it gets a hit bam it shows it to you.

For those of you unfamiliar with the define command here’s a screenshot:

So, as you can see, these definitions carry much weight to the person who wants to do research into that field. But also to potential customers looking for that product for the first time, or even to strenghten your image as an authority in your field as a company. Now, let’s look at what influences these results or basically how to get yours up there.

For those more technically inclined I recommend reading the patent application which is here: link shortened It’s an interesting read and the pdf basically explains the whole process. But if you’re only interested in the tips, here they are:

• be an authority in the field (Google checks with such authorities before even looking at other pages)
• use words like glossary, definition, dictionary, and variations thereof to tell Google there’s a definition there (try to include them in the page title if possible)
• use <dl>, <dt> and <dd> as html tags to indicate definition lists (search w3c for more info)
• understand that separators can be <p>, <li>, <br> and <tr> (to move on to next definition so try not to break up definitions with these elements)
• start lines with the words you want to get defined or otherwise those lines are not indexed
• the words you define should be marked with <b> or such
• make sure there are at least 5 other definitions of the page (or more)
• notice that there from the definitions all html code, punctuation, whitespace and all non-alphanumeric chars at the beginning or end
• if the definition is a duplicate it will be removed (don’t just copy definitions)
• if the definition begins with the word see it will be ignored and considered a reference
• only definitions with the clearly defined “headwords” will be shown otherwise ignored

The post I saw also had incorrectly said not to capitalize the first letter of the definition but that is not so, it merely is a step that the define application does on its own if it is not already capitalized.

I hope you’ve understood this, and I’ve read the patent myself, it’s quite interesting and it can give you a bit of a boost seo-wise. As always click the big mailbox on the right there to ask me something and thank you for reading what I find to be really interesting stuff.

Again thanks to the even more feed subscribers from today, I’m glad that you find this blog so useful