In early October, Google announced a new project called " The Physical Web," which they explain like this:
The Physical Web is an approach to unleash the core superpower of the web: interaction on demand. People should be able to walk up to any smart device - a vending machine, a poster, a toy, a bus stop, a rental car - and not have to download an app first. Everything should be just a tap away.
At the moment this is an experimental project which is designed to promote establishing an open standard by which this mechanism could work. The two key elements of this initiative are:
URLs: The project proposes that all 'smart devices' should advertise a URL by which you can interact with that device. The device broadcasts its URL to anyone in the vicinity, who can detect it via their smartphone (with the eventual goal being this functionality is built into the smart phone operating systems rather than needing third-party apps).
Beacons: Not well known until Apple recently jumped on the bandwagon announcing iBeacons, beacon technology has been around for a couple of years now. Using a streamlined sibling of Bluetooth, called Bluetooth Low Energy (no pairing, range of ~70 metres / ~230 feet) it allows smartphones to detect the presence of nearby beacons and their approximate distance. Until now they've mostly been used to 'hyper-local' location based applications (check this blog post of mine for some thoughts on how this might impact SEO).
The project proposes adapting and augmenting the signal that Beacons send out to include a URL by which nearby users might interact with a smart device.
This post is about looking to the future at ways this could potentially impact search. It isn't likely that any serious impact will happen within the next 18 months, and it is hard to predict exactly how things will pan out, but this post is designed to prompt you to think about things proactively.
Usage examples
To help wrap your head around this, lets look at a few examples of possible uses:
Bus times: This is one of the examples Google gives, where you walk up to a bus stop and on detecting the smart device embedded into the stop your phone allows you to pull the latest bus times and travel info.
Item finder: Imagine when you go to the store looking for a specific item. You could pull out your phone and check stock of the item, as well as being directed to the specific part of the store where you can find it.
Check in: Combined with using URLs that are only accessible on local wifi / intranet, you could make a flexible and consistent check in mechanism for people in a variety of situations.
I'm sure there are many many more applications that are yet to be thought up. One thing to notice is that there is no reason you can't bookmark these advertised URLs and use them elsewhere, so you can't be sure that someone accessing the URL is actually by the device in question. You can get some of the way there by using URLs that are only accessible within a certain network, but that isn't going to be a general solution.
Also, note that these URLs don't need to be constrained to just website URLs; they could just as well be deep links into apps which you might have installed.
Parallels to the web and ranking
There are some obvious parallels to the web (which is likely why Google named it the way they did). There will be many smart devices which will map to URLs which anyone can go to. A corollary of this is that there will be similar issues to those we see in search engines today. Google already identified one such issue—ranking—on the page for the project:
At first, the nearby smart devices will be small, but if we're successful, there will be many to choose from and that raises an important UX issue. This is where ranking comes in. Today, we are perfectly happy typing "tennis" into a search engine and getting millions of results back, we trust that the first 10 are the best ones. The same applies here. The phone agent can sort by both signal strength as well as personal preference and history, among many other possible factors. Clearly there is lots of work to be done here.
So there is immediately a parallel between with Google's role on the world wide web and their potential role on this new physical web; there is a suggestion here that someone needs to rank beacons if they become so numerous that our phones or wearable devices are often picking up a variety of beacons.
Google proposes proximity as the primary measure of ranking, but the proximity range of BLE technology is very imprecise, so I imagine in dense urban areas that just using proximity won't be sufficient. Furthermore, given the beacons are cheap (in bulk, $5 per piece will get you standalone beacons with a year-long battery) I imagine there could be "smart device spam."
Further impacts on the search industry
1. Locating out-of-range smart devices
Imagine that these smart devices became fairly widespread and were constantly advertising information to anyone nearby with a smart devices. I imagine, in a similar vein to schema.org actions which provide a standard way for websites to describe what they enable someone to do ("affordances," for the academics), we could establish similar semantic standards for smart devices enabling them to advertise what services/goods they provide.
Now imagine you are looking for a specific product or service, which you want as quickly as possible (e.g "I need to pick up a charger for my phone," or "I need to charge my phone on the move"). You could imagine that Google or some other search engine will have mapped these smart devices. If the above section was about "ranking," then this is about "indexing."
You could even imagine they could keep track of what is in stock at each of these places, enabling "environment-aware" searches. How might this work? Users in the vicinity whose devices have picked up the beacons, and read their (standardised) list of services could then record this into Google's index. It sounds like a strange paradigm, but it is exactly how Google's app indexing methodology works.
2. Added context
Context is becoming increasingly important for all searches that we do. Beyond your search phrase, Google look at what device you are on, where you are, what you have recently searched for, who you know, and quite a bit more. It makes our search experiences significantly better, and we should expect that they are going to continue to try to refine their understanding of our context ever more.
It is not hard to see that knowing what beacons people are near adds various facets of context. It can help refine location even further, giving indications to the environment you are in, what you are doing, and even what you might be looking for.
3. Passive searches
I've spoken a little bit about passive searches before; this is when Google runs searches for you based entirely off your context with no explicit search. Google Now is currently the embodiment of this technology, but I expect we'll see it become more and more
I believe could even see see a more explicit element of this become a reality, with the rise of conversational search. Conversational search is already at a point where a search queries can have persistent aspects ("How old is Tom Cruise?", then "How tall is he?" - the pronoun 'he' refers back to previous search). I expect we'll see this expand more into multi-stage searches ("Sushi restaurant within 10 minutes of here.", and then "Just those with 4 stars or more").
So, I could easily imagine that these elements combine with "environment-aware" searches (whether they are powered in the fashion I described above or not) to enable multi-stage searches that result in explicit passive searches. For example, "nearby shops with iPhone 6 cables in stock," to which Google fails to find a suitable result ("there are no suitable shops nearby") and you might then answer "let me know when there is."
Wrap up
It seems certain that embedded smart devices of some sort are coming, and this project from Google looks like a strong candidate to establish a standard. With the rise of smart devices, whichever form they end up taking and standard they end up using, it is certain this is going to impact the way people interact with their environments and use their smart phones and wearables.
It is hard to believe this won't also have a heavy impact upon marketing and business. What remains less clear is the scale of impact that this will have on SEO. Hopefully this post has got your brain going a bit so as and industry, we can start to prepare ourselves for the rise of smart devices.
I'd love to hear in the comments what other ideas people have and how you guys think this stuff might affect us.
Picture a World in which you get an implant/gadget that connects you straight into Google's search algorithm. And every question/topic that "passes" your mind / your thoughts is answered instantly by Google ... no typing.
Will you still need education when you have a Google connection?
Easy, freedom, advancement, cool ... or slavery?
Every desired products that you think of is paid and shipped to the details stored in you implant/gadget, faster than you can imagine.
Who decides?
This sounds like fiction? Read/remember this in 25 years. :)
Cornel
This is the web I am looking for!
When I walk into a shoe store I want to know what is in stock in "my size 13" A size 10 is not going to help me a bit. Just send it to my phone and the sales person and I can save time and be more productive.
I want to see smart ads like in the movie Minority Report.
Happy Monday
Tom, you have put some very strong points here.
I was referring to the article on you website which you mentioned here....
We could imagine a physical analogue of this scenario where Google sees users leaving a store following a search and going into a similar store a short moment later - might Google start directing people to that second store right away in future?
Now just think about the other side of the story, what would happen when they integrate their AdWords Platform in the Physical Web? (which is their ultimate goal for starting this service i guess)
We are already living in the "1st Page of Google Results Economy". Now with the extension of Physical Web, how much it's going to influence our buying decisions?
Any thought on that Tom?
Yowza! Can you imagine having retail store bounce rates? So crazy.
It all seems a bit creepy from a distance, but like everything, it'll likely be a slow progression that the general public will barely notice. Thanks for the intro on this project!
It's never too early to start thinking about this and the impact it will have on your search strategy. It's going to be one of the next big steps in mobile. Obviously some kinks need to be worked out but we'll probably be seeing this sooner than we'd imagine.
Really nice article Tom. Google are the kings at thinking "outside of the box" and have spoken about creating this star trek style ubiquitous system for a long time. I spoke recently at the digital marketing show about something similar but you've really taken it on a step.
I think the interesting area will be how Google monetise a physical web presence; or indeed, if they can without damaging the end product. We're of course a long time (at least in digital terms) away from this becoming a reality but strategising now for potential disruptions in search is what we're all here for.
Thanks for sharing your deck, Andrew! Some nice stuff there. :)
As to how Google will monetise the physical web - I don't think all the angles are clear yet so it is hard to know. But their expertise in search and applying machine learning will mean that whichever direction things go they are going to be well positioned to help people make sense of any 'physical web'.
Great post, Tom! I've only recently started using Google Now (the shame!) but it's really been an eye-opener regarding what's possible for the future of passive search and location-based stuff. This post has really gotten me thinking about what the future holds. It's crazy to think that in a few years, folks who only work in browser-based web marketing will be running the risk of becoming irrelevant.
Tom ~ Brilliant Post.
"So there is immediately a parallel between with Google's role on the world wide web and their potential role on this new physical web; there is a suggestion here that someone needs to rank beacons if they become so numerous that our phones or wearable devices are often picking up a variety of beacons." - Excellent insight, still processing it.
Hi Tom, thanks for your sharing. Interesting read. And take a look at our project webbeacon: https://webbeacon.org. We aim to map iBeacon identifiers to web app URLs. Maybe you would be interesting to hear about.
Very interesting
I always saw the web as a tool that can popularize a brand image. There, it is Google that becomes the perfect tool. Simply grasp the basics. Your explanations are very clear.
Maybe in the future, but now? Difficult.. anyway very interesting article :-)
Thank you very much for sharing, it´s very interesting :-)
Hey,
Really one of nice Article but day day Google change their search results algo update. I will suggest google shouldn't be change to hastily.
Perhaps un the future we can see anything like this but now it's a fantasy. Interesting and imaginative article.
Cheers
Interesting Read; The smartphones are changing the way we used to search before. Seems like this Google's Physical web is bringing a lot of changes into search industry.
I think of the "Item Finder" usage every time I go to a retail store! They already have detailed planograms of where items should be located throughout the store as well as up to date or up to minute inventory counts for every item, so it is just the logical next step to improve the customer experience. Imagine the impact on customer service, as well as sales with people being able to find more items that they were already looking for anyway.
Maybe we will see this ten years from now, and i will be very excited for that when it is become reality
Makes complete sense, but what about ad revenue, how will that Google Advertising change in that case if there are no Search Queries , what gives.
This post really got me thinking.
So glad we have folks like Tom-Anthony following things as they take shape and more importantly share their views.
Vijay @gunshotdigital
appropriate article, just got what i needed to boost my site organic traffic
Tom, this sounds highly possible and is very interesting to read about. I welcome the change, it creates more competition and learning experiences for SEO's.
Thanks for sharing very useful and needed post.
Thanks Tom, what a great introduction article in to the future of the Physical web. I am looking forward of the Physical web and the challenges that this will bring to SEO's and how I will have to change and learn new skills and techniques.