What’s the difference between structured and unstructured data?

• Virtual Track #2

Seems like a pretty obvious thing – but not so much. The web is an ocean of human generated unstructured data permanently shifting with tides of change. It’s a major challenge for Google to gather, process and Index unstructured data from the gazillions of websites vying for visibility. Information Retrieval (IR) systems designed by Google for web search differ greatly to structured database systems. One focus is on text queries and probabilistic/statistics based ranked retrieval. The other is focused on numbers and strings, with an algebraic/logic-based approach. Once you understand the difference between both approaches, you’re in a much more informed position to optimize for maximum visibility and decoration in search engine results.