Scanned files could improve SEO

04/11/2008

Google has announced that it may soon be using new technology which will enable it to index scanned documents.

Evin Levey, product manager at the search engine said in company blog, that scanned documents will be indexed using optical character recognition (OCR), reports BusinessFeet.com.

This process could soon be used for search engine optimisation (SEO) although, as Mr Levey explained, OCR can be difficult for computers to run as they have to interpret symbols.

He uses the example of circle, noting that this could be read as a zero, the letter "O", a coffee ring, or just a circle.

Mr Levey commented: "People learn to answer this kind of question very quickly, but for the computer it is a painstaking and error-prone process."

Despite this, he said that at some point in the near future, scanned documents could become an integral part of SEOweb design.

Tom Griffiths, Cheeze's business development manager stated that it is crucial to get an SEO professional to work on a website because it is an ever-changing, "no guarantees" industry.