The Web is an ever-diminishing aspect of our online lives. We increasingly use apps, wearables, smart assistants (Google Now, Siri, Cortana), smart watches, and smart TVs for searches, and none of these are returning 10 blue links. In fact, we usually don't end up on a website at all.
Apps are the natural successor, and an increasing amount of time spent optimising search is going to be spent focusing on apps. However, whilst app search is going to be very important, I don't think it is where the trend stops.
This post is about where I think the trends take us—towards what I am calling "Data-Driven Search". Along the way I am going to highlight another phenomenon: "Compound Queries". I believe these changes will dramatically alter the way search and SEO work over the next 1-3 years, and it is important we begin now to think about how that future could look.
App indexing is just the beginning
With App Indexing Google is moving beyond the bounds of the web-search paradigm which made them famous. On Android, we are now seeing blue links which are not to web pages but are deep links to open specific pages within apps:
This is interesting in and of itself, but it is also part of a larger pattern which began with things like the answer box and knowledge graph. With these, we saw that Google was shifting away from sending you somewhere else but was starting to provide the answer you were looking for right there in the SERPs. App Indexing is the next step, which moves Google from simply providing answers to enabling actions—allow you to
do things.
App Indexing is going to be around for a while—but here I want to focus on this trend towards providing answers and enabling actions.
Notable technology trends
Google's mission is to build the "ultimate assistant"—something that anticipates your needs and facilitates fulfilling them. Google Now is just the beginning of what they are dreaming of.
So many of the projects and technologies that Google, and their competitors, are working on are converging with the trend towards "answers and actions", and I think this is going to lead to a really interesting evolution in searches—namely what I am calling "Data-Driven Search".
Let's look at some of the contributing technologies.
Compound queries: query revisions & chained queries
There is a lot of talk about conversational search at the moment, and it is fascinating for many reasons, but in this instance I am mostly interested in two specific facets:
- Query revision
- Chained queries
The current model for multiple queries looks like this:
You do one query (e.g. "recipe books") and then, after looking at the results of that search, you have a better sense of exactly what it is you are looking for and so you refine your query and run another search (e.g. "vegetarian recipe books"). Notice that you do two distinct searches—with the second one mostly completely separate from the first.
Conversational search is moving us towards a new model which looks more like this, which I'm calling the Compound Query model:
In this instance, after evaluating the results I got, I don't make a new query but instead a Query Revision which relates back to that initial query. After searching "recipe books", I might follow up with "just show me the vegetarian ones". You can already do this with conversational search:
Example of a "Query Revision"—one type of Compound Query
Currently, we only see this intent revision model working in conversational search, but I expect we will see it migrate into desktop search as well. There will be a new generation of searchers who won't have been "trained" to search in the unnatural and stilted keyword-oriented that we have. They'll be used to conversational search on their phones and will apply the same patterns on desktop machines. I suspect we'll also see other changes to desktop-based search which will merge in other aspects of how conversational search results are presented. There are also other companies working on radical new interfaces, such as Scinet by Etsimo (their interface is quite radical, but the problems it solves and addresses are ones Google will likely also be working on).
So many SEO paradigms don't begin to apply in this scenario; things like keyword research and rankings are not compatible with a query model that has multiple phases.
This new query model has a second application, namely Chained Queries, where you perform an initial query, and then on receiving a response you perform a second query on the same topic (the classic example is "How tall is Justin Bieber?" followed by "How old is he?"—the second query is dependent upon the first):
Example of a Chained Query—the second type of Compound Query
It might be that in the case of chained queries, the latter queries could be converted to be standalone queries, such that they don't muddy the SEO waters quite as much as as queries that have revisions. However, I'm not sure that this necessarily stands true, because every query in a chain adds context that makes it much easier for Google to accurately determine your intent in later queries.
If you are not convinced, consider that in the example above, as is often the case in examples (such as the Justin Bieber example), it is usually clear from the formulation that this is explicitly a chained query. However—there are chained queries where it is not necessarily clear that the current query is chained to the previous. To illustrate this, I've borrowed an example which Behshad Behzadi, Director of Conversational Search at Google, showed at SMX Munich last month:
Example of a "hidden" Chained Query—it is not explicit that the last search refers to the previous one.
If you didn't see the first search for "pictures of mario" before the second and third examples, it might not be immediately obvious that the second "pictures of mario" query has taken into account the previous search. There are bound to be far more subtle examples than this.
New interfaces
The days of all Google searches coming solely via a desktop-based web browser are already long since dead, but mobile users using voice search are just the start of the change—there is an ongoing divergence of interfaces. I'm focusing here on the output interfaces—i.e., how we consume the results from a search on a specific device.
The primary device category that springs to mind is that of wearables and smart watches, which have a variety of ways in which they communicate with their users:
- Compact screens—devices like the Apple Watch and Microsoft Band have compact form factor screens, which allow for visual results, but not in the same format as days gone by—a list of web links won't be helpful.
- Audio—with Siri, Google Now, and Cortana all becoming available via wearable interfaces (that pair to smart phones) users can also consume results as voice.
- Vibrations—the Apple Watch can give users directions using vibrations to signal left and right turns without needing to look or listen to the device. Getting directions already covers a number of searches, but you could imagine this also being useful for various yes/no queries (e.g. "is my train on time?").
Each of these methods is incompatible with the old "title & snippet" method that made up the 10 blue links, but furthermore they are also all different from one another.
What is clear is that there is going to need to be an increase in the forms in which search engines can respond to an identical query, with responses being adaptive to the way in which the user will consume their result.
We will also see queries where the query may be "handed off" to another device: imagine me doing a search for a location on my phone and then using my watch to give me direction. Apple already has "Handover"which does this in various contexts, and I expect we'll see the concept taken further.
This is related to Google increasingly providing us with encapsulated answers, rather than links to websites—especially true on wearables and smart devices. The interesting phenomenon here is that these answers don't specify a specific layout, like a webpage does. The data and the layout are separated.
Which leads us to...
Cards
Made popular by Google Now, cards are prevalent in both iOS and Android, as well as on social platforms. They are a growing facet of the mobile experience:
Cards provide small units of information in an accessible chunk, often with a link to dig deeper by flipping a card over or by linking through to an app.
Cards exactly fit into the paradigm above—they are more concerned with the data you will see and less so about the way in which you will see it. The same cards look different in different places.
Furthermore, we are entering a point where you can now do more and more from a card, rather than it leading you into an app to do more. You can response to messages, reply to tweets, like and re-share, and all sorts of things all from cards, without opening an app; I highly recommend this blog post which explores this phenomenon.
It seems likely we'll see Google Now (and mobile search as it becomes more like Google Now) allowing you to do more and more right from cards themselves—many of these things will be actions facilitated by other parties (by way of APIs of schema.org actions). In this way Google will become a "junction box" sitting between us and third parties who provide services; they'll find an API/service provider and return us a snippet of data showing us options and then enable us to pass back data representing our response to the relevant API.
Shared screens
The next piece of the puzzle is "shared screens", which covers several things. This starts with Google Chromecast, which has popularised the ability to "throw" things from one screen to another. At home, any guests I have over who join my wifi are able to "throw" a YouTube video from their mobile phone to my TV via the Chromecast. The same is true for people in the meeting rooms at Distilled offices and in a variety of other public spaces.
I can natively throw a variety of things: photos, YouTube videos, movies on Netflix etc., etc. How long until that includes searches? How long until I can throw the results of a search on an iPad on to the TV to show my wife the holiday options I'm looking at? Sure we can do that by sharing the whole screen now, but how long until, like photos of YouTube videos, the search results I throw to the TV take on a new layout that is suitable for that larger screen?
You can immediately see how this links back to the concept of cards and interfaces outlined above; I'm moving data from screen to screen, and between devices that provide different interfaces.
These concepts are all very related to the concept of "fluid mobility" that Microsoft recently presented in their Productivity Future Vision released in February this year.
An evolution of this is if we reach the point that some people have envisioned, whereby many offices workers, who don't require huge computational power, no longer have computers at their desks. Instead their desks just house dumb terminals: a display, keyboard and mouse which connect to the phone in their pockets which provides the processing power.
In this scenario, it becomes even more usual for people to be switching interfaces "mid task" (including searches)—you do a search at your desk at work (powered by your phone), then continue to review the results on the train home on the phone itself before browsing further on your TV at home.
Email structured markup
This deserves a quick mention—it is another data point in the trend of "enabling action". It doesn't seem to be common knowledge that you can use structured markup and schema.org markup in emails, which works in both Gmail and Google Inbox.
Editor's note: Stay tuned for more on this in tomorrow's post!
The main concepts they introduce are "highlights" and "actions"—sound familiar? You can define actions that become buttons in emails allowing people to confirm, save, review, RSVP, etc. with a single click right in the email.
Currently, you have to apply to Google for them to whitelist emails you send out in order for them to mark the emails up, but I expect we'll see this rolling out more and more. It may not seem directly search-related but if you're building the "ultimate personal assistant", then merging products like Google Now and Google Inbox would be a good place to start.
The rise of data-driven search
There is a common theme running through all of the above technologies and trends, namely data:
- We are increasingly requesting from Search Engines snippets of data, rather than links to strictly formatted web content
- We are increasingly being provided the option for direct action without going to an app/website/whatever by providing a snippet of data with our response/request
I think in the next 2 years small payloads of data will be the new currency of Google. Web search won't go away anytime soon, but large parts of it will be subsumed into the data driven paradigm. Projects like Knowledge Vault, which aims to dislodge the Freebase/Wikipedia (i.e. manually curated) powered Knowledge Graph by pulling facts directly from the text of all pages on the web, will mean mining the web for parcels of data become feasible at scale. This will mean that Google knows where to look for specific bits of data and can extract and return this data directly to the user.
How all this might change the way users and search engines interact:
- The move towards compound queries will mean it becomes more natural for people to use Google to "interact" with data in an iterative process; Google won't just send us to a set of data somewhere else but will help us sift through it all.
- Shared screens will mean that search results will need to be increasingly device agnostic. The next generation of technologies such as Apple Handover and Google Chromecast will mean we increasingly pass results between devices where they may take on a new layout.
- Cards will be one part of making that possible by ensuring that results can rendered in various formats. Users will become more and more accustomed to interacting with sets of cards.
- The focus on actions will mean that Google plugs directly into APIs such that they can connect users with third party backends and enable that right there in their interface.
What we should be doing
I don't have a good answer to this—which is exactly why we need to talk about it more.
Firstly, what is obvious is that lots of the old facets of technical SEO are already breaking down. For example, as I mentioned above, things like keyword research and rankings don't fit well with the conversational search model where compound queries are prevalent. This will only become more and more the case as we go further down the rabbit hole. We need to educate clients and work out what new metrics help us establish how Google perceive us.
Secondly, I can't escape the feeling that APIs are not only going to increase further in importance, but also become more "mainstream". Think how over the years ownership of company websites started in the technical departments and migrated to marketing teams—I think we could see a similar pattern with more core teams being involved in APIs. If Google wants to connect to APIs to retrieve data and help users do things, then more teams within a business are going to want to weigh in on what it can do.
APIs might seem out of the reach and unnecessary for many businesses (exactly as websites used to...), but structured markup and schema.org are like a "lite API"—enabling programmatic access to your data and even now to actions available via your website. This will provide a nice stepping stone where needed (and might even be sufficient).
Lastly, if this vision of things does play out, then much of our search behaviour could be imagined to be a sophisticated take on faceted navigation—we do an initial search and then sift through and refine the data we get back to drill down to the exact morsels we were looking for. I could envision "Query Revision" queries where the initial search happens within Google's index ("science fiction books") but subsequent searches happen in someone else's, for example Amazon's, "index" ('show me just those with 5 stars and more than 10 reviews that were released in the last 5 years').
If that is the case, then what I will be doing is ensuring that Distilled's clients have a thorough and accurate "indexes" with plenty of supplementary information that users could find useful. A few years ago we started worrying about ensuring our clients' websites have plenty of unique content, and this would see us worrying about ensuring they have a thorough "index" for their product/service. We should be doing that already, but suddenly it isn't going to be just a conversion factor, but a ranking factor too (following the same trend as many other signals, in that regard)
Discussion
Please jump in the comments, or tweet me at @TomAnthonySEO, with your thoughts. I am sure many of the details for how I have envisioned this may not be perfectly accurate, but directionally I'm confident and I want to hear from others with their ideas.
As I wrote on Twitter, I LOVE when somebody - in this case you Tom - is able to talk about things I described as plausible hypothesis in the past, and he does it much better than I did and do.
Now a question for you:
what is your opinion about the relation between "search" (100% predictive in this specific case) and all the data Google may retrieve from apps installed in a device?
Google three years ago literally bought the team of Behav.io, and I think it is reasonable to think that we already started using part of the Behav.io technology (evolved), for better personalizing and "helping" users with providing "a la carte" assisted information, especially via Google Now.
Google was/is already doing that using information we ourselves generate using its proprietary apps (gmail, search history, maps history + gps information et al), but I consider that Google (as well as Apple and, maybe Microsoft) is able - also legally via TOS - to use the data generated by other apps (eg.: what we read on Feedly or Nuzzel, what are the friends we talk the most on Twitter, what kind of games we like to play the most...).
Thanks! :)
Interesting points you raise. Clearly, Google (and Apple with Siri, Microsoft with Cortana) will consume as much information as users will allow (technically allow via settings and allow us a group through their reactions to data being used) and it makes absolute sense for them to use this for anticipatory search.
If you view it from the perspective of a 'personal assistant' (which is what Google say they are aiming towards) then it is implied they have access to all your data from different sources.
I think we're going to see Google making all sorts of predictions where we can't even understand how they possibly made the connections (relevant is this post from Craig Bradford last week). The potential is clearly huge.
The main pushback in the short term may very well be consumer readiness for this sort of data usage, but people will slowly relent (remember the uproar about Gmail 'reading your emails' for ads to begin with, which now isn't even discussed).
Thank you for the post. I much impact your sentence: "Apps are the natural successor of the web". It is true that increasingly use more app, but only with our usual web. when we surf the internet looking for something new always use web. Do you think that the web would cease to exist?
I can't imagine that the web is going to go away anytime soon. I do think slowly a lot of it will shift ever more towards being a platform where we don't visit sites so much as use apps (web based apps, I mean). The old school web will become a smaller and smaller part of what we do online. It just isn't the best medium for a lot of what we are doing online nowadays.
What an absolutely fantastic post, incredibly well thought out and with some incredible insights. I think you are absolutely right. I think the key to all of this is to always have one eye on how Google makes money and they can maximise that by keeping people their pages as much as possible before eventually get sent to the desired information - thereby maximising their potential return - so the more data they've got to use the more it will benefit them and the more a webmaster providing that data will benefit.
Thanks, Simon! :)
You make a good point, which I didn't touch on here, about Google wanting to maximise the time they can keep the user journey under their control. It is hard to be convinced that, in the short term, giving them our data is entirely too our benefit, but if our competitors start doing it then we have no choice but to follow, and if you are going to do it you may as well do it better than those competitors! Either way you end up in the same place.
Tom, it is a brilliant article.
If I can ask a left field question. Google is under pressure to get more clicks through Adwords, their stellar growth is slowing with the movement to mobile etc. I believe the decreases in organic search results on the SERP enhances CTR on Adwords. With the movement to direct answers do you foresee consequences to Adwords or how google revenue raise? Or is that a bridge too far....
Thanks for your research Tom. The videos are incredibly helpful for explaining such a difficult subject!
Based on this research and the direction conversational search is heading, I believe the area of this subject that deserves attention for agencies is what to do for our clients...
Here is what I have compiled:
- Fact pages for a clients industry
- Markup everything...https://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2014/06/30/how-to-pick-or-improvise-the-right-schema-org-markup-for-your-local-business/
- Raise that DA with "interest based content creation and promotion" thru social channels
- Create content that satisfies mobile searches
- Leverage apps to promote core products and services
BUT MY FAVORITE (& most unique) TACTIC THAT I SAW EXECUTED BRILLIANTLY IS BY STUDIO NEAT
They are a design company who sells and makes products that THEY think are AWESOME. They have cocktail products, but instead of doing a bunch of boring content, they decided to create an exceptional app, Highball, that listed all sorts of cocktails and how to make them.
The app was so great that it took off on product hunt and got alot of media coverage. I think PR like that might effect your SEO...
What does this have to do with where search engines are heading tho???!!!
It has everything to do with it!
As digital marketers, it is time to think of all the other aspects of search: local relevance (think airbnb pages), cross promotion, deep linking and PR via apps (think highball), and last but not least, how can we create content that satisfies a mobile searcher (think... well... keep thinking...we need to step this area up).
Just some food for thought :)
Tom,
Very interesting post that certainly requires more thought and discussion as you said. Really appreciate you taking the time to pull your research and thoughts together. I have to admit, it makes me feel like there are a lot of loose marbles rolling around and I can't quite get my hands on all of them...it's tough to build a solid new paradigm (as no one can predict the future), to move toward, but it's so important to keep an eye on the future and help clients prepare their marketing and communication efforts. Part of that has to be continually thinking through these changes.
Couple of thoughts/questions that came to mind as I tried to enhance my paradigm for the future while reading your post:
1) How do you see this impacting users working to research topics with answers that are opinion based?
Example: I'm researching the best way to improve the suspension on my car for rally driving and I want to know what others recommend. Essentially, a deep answer that can't really be based in fact is required?
2) How about the impact on queries that are geared toward a transaction, but more in the research phase. IE someone starts looking for a new chair for their living room and is exploring different e-commerce sites online, friend recommendations via Pinterest, FB, etc.?
3) B2B businesses that use their sites and content for lead generation - for example a financial consultant?
Essentially, I can see how these changes would allow for MORE integration into areas of our lives that are either:
1) Limited in the technological integration because of the hardware/software limitations we've faced (such as the directions example you gave where an Apple Watch might be able to provide more subtle and user-friendly directional information than just a saucy person on a GPS with a computer voice.
2) Were previously not touchable by technology at all because we lacked the hardware, maybe computing power, maybe computing logic to be helpful.
But I don't exactly see them changing the landscape of search where users begin to interact with businesses. I see our situation as expansion more that adjustment, but perhaps that's flat-out wrong :).
Thinking out loud here...I am wondering if the growth and new tech directions you brought up might:
1) Adjust how searchers gather and interact with right/wrong, yes/no, or black/white data points
2) Allow tech giants more room to interact in areas of our life that were previously inaccessible
What I'm struggling to understand is how this impacts the world where businesses typically interact/care about search like:
1) When users are ready to purchase and are using transactional queries
2) When users are gathering information before a purchase
3) When users are in discovery mode and exploring new things (this I can see more of an adjustment as the way we discover information could adjust a lot).
This is of course important as most SEO's, agencies, etc. get paid by businesses that care about those factors primarily.
I suppose there could be a radical enough change coming where Google essentially "is" the website between users and their transactions because businesses are just feeding them data. That seems unlikely though as I don't see businesses wanting to play along with Google to that degree. However, it likely all depends on the user and how they choose to interact.
Lots too think about and ponder. The biggest thing I'm seeing here is that SEO's need to adjust to being "Search Experts" - people who are capable of understanding the impact of the ever-changing mix of tech improvements and user behavior. The evolutionary pace here is astonishing and I personally am continuing to see the gap grow between how quickly businesses can adjust to new tech and user behavior and the rapid rate of change that occurs as a result of that mix. That's a different discussion though.
Thanks again Tom!
Fantastic post!!
So are we having a search engine that can deliver direct answers, rather than serving up a page of resources? It doesn’t sound promising if we're a follower of the traditional SEO model.
Great post Tom!
As you said everyone will be pretty much forced to follow this trend and offer structured data out for grab.
Do you see deep app indexing competing with mobile sites anytime soon? Imagine a large eCommerce has an adaptive site and an app with a similar experience. Which one of the two will dominate on search results?
Good question... on the other hand, we should also consider how many apps in reality nothing are but web sites with a very well done adaptive design.
Hi Fabrizio,
IMO Google will want to keep its users in the browser (chrome) for various reasons (tracking).
Cornel
@ Gianluca
eh eh I agree! Good apps still cost and in order to jump on it many companies took this shortcut. This further validate the point of picking a fight choosing one or the other. In a near feature these considerations will probably make sense but right now app indexing is not mature enough to make anyone drop their mobile site. Exciting future ahead!
@ Cornel
Yesterday I checked my voice search history, I doubt Google has any difficulty tracking my searches on mobile . In fact mobile is where Universal Analytics sees its best adoption, as an android user I have an advertising ID as opposed to cookies in a browser. On the other end your point is valid if we consider devices that are not running Android as Apple and Microsoft.
Yeah - I agree about tracking. If consumers show they want apps in the search results then I don't think Google are foolish enough to try and force something else. Besides which, there is no GA available for mobile apps so there is still plenty of opportunity to track people there too.
Hey Fabrizio,
Good questions. I have a couple of points:
Having said all that, Google want the 'long click' where you don't bounce back to the search results looking for something else and are supporting app indexing and deep links. It is hard to believe they aren't betting on apps being important.
Awesome post, Tom.
Stuff like this is yet another reason why I shrug everytime I see someone who wants to rank number 1 on keyword x. It just doesn't work like that anymore and as you point out it will only get further and further away from it.
Oh and thanks to the "Mario" example I can't help but imagine if Gotze sounds Italian when he speaks. Guess I'll have to google that.
the perfect piece of work. Sometime its hard to get this kind of stuff to read.
fantastic article , Thanks a lot !
A lot of what you're talking about is what we've had in conversational search since at least 2013 but you're exactly spot-on. This is where we're headed. Google *should* know what your query 'means.' For instance if you are a mom of 4 and it's a Sunday morning and you Google "fun activities for kids" and then "ice cream" you probably want a recipe or a way to make it. If it's 95° F and you're at the beach according to your phone location, well you probably want to EAT one.
The primary example used in this discussion other places is "Who is the US president?" "How old is he?" "Who is his wife?" If you want to find others discussing the same thing, start with "who is his wife" and you'll find all the other discussions.
Great topic - can't wait to see how much better this can be.
Fascinating article, thank you so much! I wonder if Google will continue to use the same metrics as they do now to rank sites, apps and information sources in their future results. If these metrics are relevant now, I would have thought they would continue to be so in the future, although the information will be packaged and delivered in different ways.
Very detailed and excellent post Tom, future of SEO would be an amazingly interactive one. People would be working on how to cater their audience in the most feasible ways not thinking about building links and stuff.
Great article, thanks for sharing. The only hope is that users will still want to read great (and long) in depth articles, with loads of information. This way, not just answering simple questions, we can still be sure to receive the deserved traffic in this "rich answers" world. Thanks again for sharing!
Tom Anthony Yes Apps indexation is one new thing in SERPs and there may more things to come in near future too.
Wow I can't believe I never noticed the Apps popping up in search queries! Great article!
I like that you mentioned Google Now Cards and how it gives you tidbits of information. Working with mobile apps is exciting as we all are pulling information from api's. Nice writeup, Cheers!
Thank you, Tom! Great article and very interesting to read!
Regarding your question "What we should be doing" - I don't have all the answers either, but do have one specific suggestion. At Appstractor, we started experimenting with modelling "user intent" by using "Composite Queries".
We're defining a Composite Query as an "Explicit Query" eg what someone types or speaks into a search box in an app, with an "Implicit Query" ie taking the signals a "Search Engine" might look at to form the rest of the query. eg someone standing on Times Square, using an Android Smartphone, who opens Google Maps and types (or says) "Steak house", is understood to mean "Show me steak houses close to Times Square".
As part of our experiments, we developed a platform to scrape data out of Android search apps, rather than the mobile web, to see what mobile consumers see when searching with apps.
Although not a panacea, the idea is that it provides SEO's and our clients with some more data to compliment keyword research and web based rankings.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on whether you see value to the industry in this.
Google is trying to keep their visitor in control, if your competitor is working on making such apps then you dont have choice you will also need to work on it. but one thing is clear that Google is one step ahead to give users the best experience of browsing. one thing is clear that the way mobile users are increasing these concept will never fail.
Hello Tom,
Thanks for informing the future search.. I can predict that till now we are informing to google that what we are looking and now as you explained Justin Bieber example, it seems like google will tell us that what exactly we are looking ;)
Interesting concept, looking forward to see..
Incredible information. Thanks for the post and congratulations.
info and very interesting article , just hope useful shop . thank you
goo.gl/pzBb3Z
interesting info gan , thanks
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