Recently, Google announced that it is in the process of making algorithmic changes to their search engine platform, in the near future. These changes made in order to provide end users with better search results. Google is confident that these new changes will solidify their dominance in the search engine market and help the company provide better mobile technology.
Search engines now incorporate relationships as a measure of relevancy. If your content is driven by topics, instead of arbitrarily stuffed keywords, according to Google, you should not be penalized when the new algorithm update. A content strategy driven by what readers want, not what search engines want, is the direction that Google has been actively working toward rewarding.
In essence, if you're selecting topics based on what your audience would find helpful, you're doing content strategy correctly. Conversely, If you're choosing what to write about based on the keywords you want to be found for, you don't have the reader top of mind; and Google is doing everything they can in its algorithm not to reward such sites in the SERPs.
Search engines already do an amazing job of analyzing the words a user types in the search box and then subsequently matching the query to web pages that contain similar words, phrases, or topics. However, matching the user intent of a specific user; appears to be much more of a challenge. "Overall, our advice for publishers continues to be focusing on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus on specific algorithm tweaks." - Matt Cutts
This current algorithmic shift is partially motivated by Google's plans to launch Google Assistant on Android devices, later this year. Google Assistant will intend to compete directly with Apple's Siri.
Ultimately, Google aims to provide users with answers to questions and specific information; rather than traditional search results. Semantic search is a necessity for a company to be competitive long-term in the mobile space. "When we can deliver small nuggets of information, that system is far more suited to mobile phones and searching with voice." - A. Singhal.
In order to better understand the searcher's intent, Google is hoping to harness the power of semantic technologies and provide better results. Once Google thoroughly understands the information a user is searching for, they will be able to instantly provide the user that information directly within the search results page for many queries.
Google is building a huge database of information with over 200 million entities. The database, which is simply called the Knowledge Graph, is a necessary element to move away from a simple word-based system; to true semantic search.
However, even with an extensive database of information, it will be extremely difficult to produce an algorithm capable of instantly, dynamically analyzing relationships, and similar attributes between hundreds of millions of individual entities.
Google must defend its turf against traditional search rivals such as Microsoft,Yahoo, and Facebook. Currently, a former Google engineer is leading a team of Facebook engineers dedicated to creating an improved Facebook social search engine.
Facebook's search engine on its social networking platform makes it easy to find friends, brands, articles, videos, and many more. Social search engine is now overhauled by engineers to make it into a public search engine. As a result, these actions, would make it better for people to find anything they wish to locate.
In response: Google, Inc. is about to launch a new commenting system that will tie into the search giant's Google+ platform, web services, and web search. In order to analyze search queries in a way similar to the human mind. The Google comment system, which will almost certainly rival that of Facebook, will have deep links to Google's network of services and websites, indexing comments in Google Search, and most significantly, the system will be available for use on third party sites.
You can't go anywhere these days without running into a site that is using Facebook's third-party comment platform, and it looks like Google wants in on the action. A third party Google comment system would ensure that users are further plugged in to their Google accounts, and brings the user one step closer to G+. "You can think of Google+ as Google 2.0" - V.Gundorta
With Social Search, Google finds relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results. All the information that appears as part of Google Social Search is published publicly on the web.
Google continues to push its social network further into the public sphere, and tie all of its products into that hard-to-miss black navigation bar at the top of every Google product page, with Google Play added just recently. "Wait to you see what we are going to do next, wait until you see how Google comes together in a beautiful integrated experience" - Vic Gundorta
The integration of social content into search signals the future of traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You have to move beyond the message on your website alone and now broadcast it to the world by utilizing social tools, interactions, and conversations to send your messages to your targeted audience.
Now more so than ever, the content you post on your social networks is going to get crawled by the search engines. Being more deliberate and transparent about what you're sharing; can certainly improve your visibility. One must often ask: Is my content fresh, written cleanly, relevant to the topic, and most importantly useful to the user?
Ultimately LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook might be winning the social networking battle for now, but Google's not giving up. Google+ social network is becoming progressively a part of the search experience for which people know Google most.
It is no secret: A war has been brewing between the two most recognizable IT icons on the Internet today. Battling it out for Web supremacy as their revenues climb to astronomical levels.
In one corner we have Search engine giant: 'Google' and in the other corner social networking powerhouse: 'Facebook''. The current battle begs the question: Who is going to dominate the social search engine world going forward?
