With all due respect, the term “faceted classification” and its application to information retrieval (library and information sciences) has been around for a very, very long time.

It is not siloing. It is not subcategorization….that’s a gross oversimplification. There are many books on the topic (Peter Morville does a good job of explaining it in his latest book Search Patterns).

Faceted classification is not necessarily good for the user. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. But it does lead to duplicate content delivery to web search engines, and from an online searcher/shopper’s point of view? That duplicate content delivery is annoying and does make them less likely to click on a search result from the same company.

I highly encourage SEOs to learn more about taxonomy, ontology, faceted classification, and many of the other topics that library and information scientists research and apply on an ongoing basis. But it means swallowing your pride (hey, I’ve had to do that many, many, many times) and learning from people who are far more knowledgeable about this subject than we are.

And it doesn’t mean Google’s interpretation of good IA. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know anyone, personally, I’ve met at Google who understands effective IA and corresponding navigation design.

John replies: Well, thanks for the comment. You might want to re-read my post from the perspective of a practicing SEO, not an academic or librarian. The discussions at SMX about “Faceted Navigation” and “additive filters” had nothing to do with information retrieval, although I’m sure some appreciate the reference to academic papers. As for Google and IA, does that matter either? SEO is not about “being right”… it’s about achieving results. That’s one of the Advanced SEO take-aways.

Seriously though, is ‘faceted navigation’ just new jargon (yay more jargon!) for subcategory links? eg ‘engagement rings’ linked from a rollout menu, once you hover on ‘rings’?

If you study one market niche long enough you can clearly see how the whole Google search model is just utter garbage with flawed geo-location results being the norm and a consumer being fed results that have little or nothing to do with what they went looking for. And why? Uhh because that “result” has been sitting in a Google index for several years (!). Rubbish. New and BETTER websites? Who cares: They sit in the equivalent of oblivion until Google deems them ready for prime time! Well that certainly means quality! What a joke. Who among us doesn’t see this for what it is: A great opp for Google to rake in Adword $$$ from desperate website owners who poured their guts into a website only to see it rot in Google oblivion for months on end.
Link building? Forget it. The world is awash in NOFOLLOW. Write great content and get it placed in other folks’ (High PR) blogs? Hell - doesn’t even make it to a Google index that I can see.

Google’s pledge to deliver quality search results is utter ^#%#^&*# - they are making phones, netbooks, diversifying right and left… “Search” for Google is like a nice logo now - nothing more.

Google has been wildly successful at making the Yellow Pages obsolete. Scores of businesses now depend on Google for their very existence. That is a testament to Google’s success up to a certain point. But by the same token how can you have this giant colossus striding the earth, telling business owners how to do this that and the other thing online while never being beholden to any rules or guidelines themselves? The SECRET Google algorithm?! I mean are you kidding me?! How about breaking these people up a la ATT? THAT would be a great first step towards fixing something that is broken and costing many small business owners their livelihood and their sanity.