Kavin Paulson
Note: This is the second part of the four-part article series. In the first part of this four-part article series, I connect the dots from the past trends that have been evolving to the present developments and discuss the top 5 trends to look for in 2024. If you haven’t read the first part of this article series, I recommend doing so before returning to this article to gain a better sense of continuity. You can read the first part here.
They are some of the most sought after social media thought leaders in the world. They are widely-recognized and are greatly influential on social media. We thought it would be fun to test their intelligence 😉 and ofcourse, we knew that the views and insights shared by these experts would be useful to our readers.
For a long time now, many of us in the SEO community have been saying this on various platforms that it’s time SEOs started looking at search beyond Google as search happens on various platforms like other search engines, app stores, e-commerce platforms like Amazon, chatbots and social networks and more. Omni channel search is both implicit and explicit in nature and thus it’s important that we take a holistic approach towards optimizing our content/web assets across platforms. In addition, emerging technologies such as Physical Web, BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) and IOT (Internet of Things) are going to disrupt the search landscape in a bigger way, and last but not the least, with the AI integrated capabilities (the AI disruption in search has already been in full swing) that will drive these technologies, the search landscape is going to be highly dynamic in the future like never before.
Now, reread the definition of SEO that I proposed long back (mentioned in the part I of this article series) considering the holistic and ever-growing nature of the search landscape and go through this article written by me as well that captured these emerging trends way back in 2016.
Now, let’s discuss the recent developments in the non-Google search landscape that has led Google to speed up the AI move and other significant changes that we see in the Google search landscape related to it.
The recent developments in the non-Google search landscape and Google’s strategies to stay ahead in the game.
Amazon has been a quite a threat to Google in the product search space for a long time now. It was reported in 2018 that Amazon surpassed Google for product searches for the first time and last year it was reported that 50% of the product searches start on Amazon.
Google also has competition from many other ecommerce platforms including platforms like Alibaba, eBay, Walmart, Shopee, Flipkart and Lazadaa etc. that have strong local presence in some markets.
Google Shopping has the reach, however Amazon growing as a dominant force in ecommerce search is a big threat for Google to deal with.
Not to mention about Amazon’s recent partnership with TikTok and Pinterest which will facilitate Integration of these platforms with Amazon and the users can make purchases through Amazon without ever leaving the respective social media platforms. This is the best of social commerce and Amazon coming together!
So, here are some of the key steps that Google has taken so far to counter Amazon and similar competitors.
Free Product Listings: Google introduced free product listings to show up in Google results in 2020, and the listings are eligible to show on Shopping Tab, Google Search, Google Images and YouTube.
Introduction of Product Grids: Google displaying product listings in search has evolved and gone to the next level with the introduction of product grids in the form of popular product carousel or grids, Deals product grids and fast pickup or delivery grid. The roll out of the same has happened in the US and a gradual roll out in testing phase has been happening in other markets as well. If you want to understand how product grid ranking works, I recommend reading this brilliant article from Brodie Clark.
Google Results Evolving into Category Pages: The significant part of this development is that Google which has always dominantly ranked category page listings in regular search results, has started showing more PDPs (Product detail pages) in the search results in the form of these product grids turning the search results for ecommerce keywords look pretty much like ecommerce category pages.
Source: This point is inspired by a LinkedIn post (prediction 2) by Chris Long, VP of Marketing at Go Fish Digital.
On top of it, Google has topped up the ecommerce related results with enhancements like faceted navigations and filters, visual treatments (aka images and videos), rich snippet data like pricing, delivery, discounts, return policies etc. This can be termed as a clear move to take on Amazon and alike. Moreover, showing mixed results that include product reviews and buying guides may truly enrich the consumer journey from search, explore to purchase.
Source: This point is inspired by a LinkedIn post (prediction 2) by Chris Long, VP of Marketing at Go Fish Digital.
Think about this: Google results turning into category pages displaying the products with all the category page filters and enhancements you can think of and taking you directly to the respective product detail pages for purchase.
Google Shopping Graph: Just like knowledge graph, Google has unmatched data on the products and sellers that they leverage to their advantage via it’s Google Shopping Graph.
AI Overviews: AI based product recommendations may turn out to be a big disruptor in the ecommerce space which I’ll discuss in the next part of this four-part article series.
The emergence of ChatGPT and a wave of other AI chatbots that entered the market within a short period and became powerful answer engines in the hands of the public set the alarm bells ringing at Google. (we will discuss the impact of this development in the fourth part of this article series). Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai declared “Code Red” and Google’s founder Larry Page and Sergey Brin were called in for help.
How did Google respond to this threat that took them by surprise? Google hurriedly launched Bard, a ChatGPT alternative which later became Gemini. The first mover advantage and it’s continuous improvisation, integrations and upgraded product launch like GPT-4o has kept ChatGPT ahead in terms of popularity than Gemini so far, though no one knows what the future holds.
Google came under fire for the hurriedly launched product (which was already under development) and some of the poor answers it generated and similar issues continue to still emerge with Gemini.
The other big step that it took to counter ChatGPT was the launch of SGE, now AI overviews – this was logically the best step that they could have taken; with the ChatGPT like AI-based chat feature and the capability to provide follow-up answers, powered by Google’s massive knowledge vault, AI overviews is supposed to provide the best of both the worlds.
Let’s discuss about the criticisms on AI overviews and their possible impact on the traditional search in the next part of this article series.
Apart from AI overviews, what else has Google done to counter the impact of ChatGPT and alike?
The launch of Google Perspective, now called Forum – a separate search tab/filter that features long form and short-form videos, images and written posts from forums/discussion boards, Q&A sites, and social media platforms. The best part, the content will have details of the content creators such as their name, profile, and the popularity of the content.
We already know about the feature i.e. Top Stories that feature news-related perspectives from note-worthy voices and sources.
It is also worthy to be mentioned that the hidden gems ranking system launched many months ago is believed to help Google achieve the above objective.
On top of that, the launch of the helpful content system is meant to give a boost to people-first content (content made for people rather than for just organic clicks) that brings uniqueness, user satisfaction, new perspectives (refer information gain score) and most importantly, content vetted by or written by subject matter experts and/or based on first-hand experience (content based on EEAT concept) is ideally supposed to rank better.
Remember the Reddit partnership we discussed about in the first part; since then, Google has started giving a boost in ranking to a lot of Reddit threads across topics. Reddit threads ideally attract experience-based and expertise-based opinions on various topics and being perceived as a strictly moderated platform, the Reddit threads in search is supposed to contribute to Google’s objective of bringing content based on first-hand experience.
[note: please note that there’s a lot of criticism about the deteriorating quality of Google results, particularly, after the rollout of AI overviews however, we have only discussed about Google’s intention behind the above explained steps to combat competition rather than making any claims in favour or against the quality of the results or the effectiveness of Google’s moves to take on the competition].
What is the one major thing (among probably others) that ChatGPT and other similar AI chatbots lack as of now compared to Google? it’s the humane touch, which can be a competitive advantage in the world of AI, which Google attempts to amplify by bringing content created by the people (rather than machine-generated answers with or without sources most of the time) who have first-hand experience or knowledge about the topics that they talk about, for the users.
Note: the above point is partly inspired by a LinkedIn post (Prediction 3) by Chris Long, VP of Marketing at Go Fish Digital.
As I write this article, OpenAI (that created ChatGPT) threw in a surprise by announcing a product – SearchGPT, which may become a potential competitor to Google. This is an AI-powered search engine (currently under testing) that can access information in real time from across the web. It will have the capabilities to provide summarized answers to the queries with links to relevant sources and can engage in conversations with the users. This may potentially address one of the biggest issues (as mentioned above) that the current version of ChatGPT has i.e. lack of links to the sources many a times. Will SearchGPT emerge as a Google Alternative? We shall discuss the possibilities in the fourth part of this article series.
The trends show that TikTok and other social media platforms like YouTube and Instagram have evolved into powerful social search engines. These platforms are used for search and discovery. Social search is popular among Gen Z and the Millennials are also gradually getting on board with this trend.
40% of Americans use TikTok as search engine. This clearly shows the growing popularity of social search and why SEOs shouldn’t ignore this emerging trend in search.
Having said that, all these reports also highlight the point that Google and other traditional search engines still dominate the search market share and these search engines’ dominance in search will not be impacted in a significant way anytime soon.
Moreover, the rise in social search doesn’t mean that large part of that comes at the cost of traditional search. There may be a lot of overlapping and cross platform search behaviour which these stats and reports may not have captured.
This article written by Lucy Thomas on Eye Killer, explains some of the reasons behind the growing popularity of social search. The younger consumers more actively use social media platform for search, discovery and inspiration.
Here I summarize some of the important points she has mentioned as the reasons behind the growing popularity of social media usage for search and discovery among the young population:
Now, what are Google’s move towards bridging this gap in search?
As the saying goes, “If you can’t beat them, join them! Google decided to actively promote social media content in its search results – as mentioned before, Google launched AI-powered ‘perspectives’ which is now called ‘Forum’ which is a tab in the Google search menu that brings UGC (User-generated content) from across board ranging from videos from social media sites to posts from forum threads. So, how does this move counter social search? – you get to see personalized and contextually relevant results (logging in helps with personalization) from not one social media platform but with multiple platforms and these pieces of content that rank, are in digestible format. These are authentic and user-generated content based on first-hand experience. These results also help you navigate to the respective social media platforms where the related conversations are happening and start engaging with the community.
In the next part of this four-part article series (to be published soon), we shall discuss next discuss the possible impact of Google’s AI Overviews (AIOs) on traditional search.
This article addresses SEOs across board – so, if you are an experienced professional, you may already know some of the things I have discussed in the article and they may sound obvious but they have been purposefully discussed to connect the dots and present the whole picture so that SEOs at all levels ( including beginners/newbies ) can understand.
5 Google Updates that Rocked the SEO World
SEO: Redefining Theory, Policy and Practice ( Part I )
Part I: SEO in 2024 and Beyond: Understanding the Chaos