The Evolution of Search

The Evolution of Search

The last eighteen months saw some of the most significant changes to the way Google produces its natural search listings. While Google updates its ranking algorithm almost on a daily basis, inclusion of entirely new signals are rare.

Since the launch of Google in 1998, back link analysis determined the credibility and relevance of a webpage. This worked well in 96 but by 2007, the very thing that helped Google dominate was also becoming its Achilles heel. As the SEO industry battled for the first page, links were getting far too noisy to provide the signal of quality they once represented.

The introduction of user data

In 2009 we saw the introduction of user data in the form of the Vince Update. It was characterised by  the dominance of brands across highly competitive search real-estate, even when they were not specifically optimised in the traditional sense.

While the SEO community complained Google was favouring brands – our research into Vince showed a strong correlation between  user data and better semantics. The sites doing well had a lot in common – they were all highly searched-for in their category and they were also synonymous with their core category keywords on the web.  For example, many people search for ‘British Airways’ following a query for ‘flights’, and the words ‘British Airways’ and ‘flights’ also appeared on the same pages a lot. As a result of this, Google has judged that ranking BA high for a search on ‘flights’ will provide a better user experience, regardless of whether the word appears on its site.

Personalised search

In December 2009, Personalised search was made default for every browser with cookies enabled, bringing an end to the universally-shared search experience. For queries with several meanings, Google attempts to return results based on ‘your’ historical context. When you search for BMI, do you mean the airline or the body mass index? If Google knows you like Amazon, then it will boost Amazon in future results.

For brands, building a search and web history with your customers and potential new customers becomes more important than just being visible to everyone. Failing to provide an engaging experience could also mean being less visible to a user in future results. If you have a loyal user-base it’s now harder for competitors to enter your search space. Of course, it’s also harder for you to enter theirs.

Social search

In January this year, Google’s social search moved from labs to beta on Google.com. For certain queries, content from your social circle –  those publically declared by you through Gmail and many of the popular social networks – are included in your results. So, if I search for ‘broadband’, and someone in my social graph is complaining about their provider, I’ll see that in my result. While Social search will  expose customer dissatisfaction, being talked about positively by a user’s peer group is about as good as advocacy getsis .

Real-time search

As it attempted to make the most of social signals in its search results, Google had an additional concern – the increasing popularity of real-time status data provided by Facebook and Twitter. For topical events, people were opting for real-time engines for discussion and discovery. In the short term, Google’s only option was to follow Bing and, for highly trending topics, simply include Twitter data directly into results. To me the integration looks poor and rarely useful in its current format. I suspect that this is a moving target, and things will continue to evolve as Google collects more data. For brand that are being talked about, having a presence on and the ability to respond through real-time engines will become an integral part of digital communications.

So, in a very short timeframe SEO moved from a purely technical discipline that could almost operate independently to other marketing and communication to one where success is intrinsically linked to what a brand is achieving elsewhere online. The key to this is taking a holistic, user-centric view of the marketing mix – considering user journeys across different marketing budgets, and taking a more integrated planning approach to your search, social and creative initiatives. This doesn’t mean that traditional SEO is now unimportant. Your site still needs to be accessible and relevant. But now, if you are to do well in search your brand also needs to be searched for, talked about and liked by users.

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