Google’s SEO Needs to Transform
This article analyzes how Google’s current SEO might need to transform, as the paradigm of searching is evolving. As Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and Microsoft Cortana are becoming popular in everyday usage, there is a shift to what consumers want out of search results. There is now more of a necessity to have structured information, compared to unstructured information, which is currently present in Google’s SEO. Unstructured information can be seen as the countless links that Google outputs as a search result. However, people nowadays do not care about the links that search engines output; they care about the information embedded in those links. They only want to see the information relevant to their search query. In essence, the information is more important than the source of the information.
This shift in paradigm may have negative repercussions for content providers, as it raises the question of financial sustainability for them. These content providers provide information for Google, and in return, these providers hope Google to drive users to click on their links and go to their site, which allows the providers to generate revenue. However, if consumers are demanding structured information and if Google does not adapt to these needs, the relationship between Google and the content provider might collapse. It also might be the fact that these content providers will go out of business.
As conversational interfaces are becoming popular, some people believe that Google’s SEO will evolve into one that will revolve around knowledge-based search graph in order to compete against Siri, Alexa, and Cortana. If this is the case, information will be evaluated based on quality of search answer and the way in which the answer is outputted. If these are the two rules to evaluate the quality of a content provider, this could push content providers to reevaluate their business model. For instance, in Apple’s Siri interface, only the top result pops up and thus would receive all the attention. Thus, content providers have to figure out a way to sell content to survive in the business. It might be the fact that certain content (such as weather or flights) might be priced more heavily.
This article connects to the topic of PageRank algorithm that we covered in class. This article insinuates that the PageRank algorithm might go extinct, as Google will need to come up with a new algorithm to evaluate how correct the content is and how well formatted the content is. Google might have to deal more with hypertexts and accumulate all the data into a single, concise structured data for consumers to continue using Google.