Academic Search Engine Optimization (ASEO)

We coined the concept of “Academic Search Engine Optimization (ASEO)”, which is the creation, publication, and modification of scholarly literature in a way that makes it easier for academic search engines to both crawl it and index it. We published guidelines on how to conduct ASEO, and discuss the advantages and downsides of academic search engine optimization.

For more details, please read the blog posts below, see our research overview, publications, projects, industry page, or look at the menu at the top of this page.

Seminar on Academic Search Engine Optimization

Have you heard of ‘academic search engine optimization’? If not, you maybe should attend our seminar ‘Academic Search Engine Optimisation (ASEO): Suchmaschinenoptimierung in der Wissenschaft‘ (in German). The seminar is based on our publication Academic Search Engine Optimization (ASEO): Optimizing Scholarly Literature for Google Scholar and Co. in which we defined academic search engine optimization as

“the creation, publication, and modification of scholarly literature in a way that makes it easier for academic search engines to both crawl it and index it”

We believe that ASEO should be an important part of your publishing process because it helps significantly to increase the visibility of your work in the academic community. When we published our article back in 2010 virtually no one even thought about that topic (as far as i know we were the first ones writing about search engine optimization for academic articles). Meanwhile, the idea of ASEO became more popular and several institutions adopted the guidelines from our paper (e.g. SAGE, Wiley, and York University) and, as covered in the seminar, the experience from the past years clearly shows the benefits of ASEO techniques.

(more…)

By Joeran Beel, ago

New Paper: On the Robustness of Google Scholar against Spam

I am currently in Toronto presenting our new paper titled “On the Robustness of Google Scholar against Spam” at Hypertext 2010. The paper is about some experiments we did on Google Scholar to find out how reliable their citation data etc. is. The paper soon will be downloadable on our publication page but for now i will post a pre-print version of that paper here in the blog:

Abstract

In this research-in-progress paper we present the current results of several experiments in which we analyzed whether spamming Google Scholar is possible. Our results show, it is possible: We ‘improved’ the ranking of articles by manipulating their citation counts and we made articles appear in searchers for keywords the articles did not originally contained by placing invisible text in modified versions of the article.

1.    Introduction

Researchers should have an interest in having their articles indexed by Google Scholar and other academic search engines such as CiteSeer(X). The inclusion of their articles in the index improves the ability to make their articles available to the academic community. In addition, authors should not only be concerned about the fact that their articles are indexed, but also where they are displayed in the result list. As with all ranked search results, articles displayed in top positions are more likely to be read.

In recent studies we researched the ranking algorithm of Google Scholar [/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][1-3] and gave advice to researchers on how to optimize their scholarly literature for Google Scholar [4]. However, there are provisos in the academic community against what we called “Academic Search Engine Optimization” [4]. There is the concern that some researchers might use the knowledge about ranking algorithms to ‘over optimize’ their papers in order to push their articles’ rankings in non-legitimate ways.

We conducted some experiments to find out how robust Google Scholar is against spamming. The experiments are not all completed yet but those that are completed show interesting results which are presented in this paper. (more…)

By Joeran Beel, ago

Academic Search Engine Optimization: What others think about it

In January we published our article about Academic Search Engine Optimization (ASEO). As expected, feedback varied strongly. Here are some of the opinions on ASEO:

Search engine optimization (SEO) has a golden age in this internet era, but to use it in academic research, it sounds quite strange for me. After reading this publication (pdf) focusing on this issue, my opinion changed.

[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][…] on first impressions it sounds like the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.

ASEO sounds good to me. I think it’s a good idea.

Good Article..

As you have probably guessed from the above criticisms, I thought that the article was a piece of crap.

In my opinion, being interested in how (academic) search engines function and how scientific papers are indexed and, of course, responding to these… well… circumstances of the scientific citing business is just natural.

Check out the following Blogs to read more about it (some in German and Dutch) (more…)

By Joeran Beel, ago