How Google goes from a Search Engine to a real Answer machine #SMX Munich
Events

How Google goes from a Search Engine to a real Answer machine #SMX Munich

26th March 2014

Currently in Munich SMX Munich is taking place. Johanna Langer is there for us and is reporting the talks. In her first session she describes what Marcus Tandler had to say about the changes Google is going through.
marcus-tandler

Hummingbird, Google Now and Knowledge Graph: How Google goes from the search engine to the real answer machine

With more than 400 slides in about one hour Marcus showed the SMX audience his presentation “Google as an answer machine.” Marcus Tandler, also known as “Mediadonis”, is Managing Director and Partner at Tandler.Doerje.Partner and lecturer at several colleges.

The users are not looking for websites, but answers!

The search behavior of Internet users is changing. While they were previously looking for each keyword, now they are looking for direct answers to more or less complex questions. Google tries to answer to this change in user behavior with the Knowledge Graphs and Google Now. So Google now provides direct answers already on the Search Engine Result Page and on various devices. To this end, the major corporation offers for example the free Android operating system, which, according to Tandler, can be compared with a dealer who gives out free syringes.

[Tweet “Searchers are now are looking for direct answers to more or less complex questions”]

The number of Knowledge Graph integrations from Google has increased enormously in recent times, as Marcus pointed out in a Search Metrics study. Even Bing is already working with the Knowledge Graph, the Google competitor also offers integrations with Twitter, so in Marcus opinion Bing offers partially even better answers to the User questions. So the searchers no longer need to visit individual websites to find what they ‘re looking for. At least one click can be saved, because Google now displays the information directly on the SERP.

The Authorship and emerging challenges

Unfortunately, the combination of content with credible and more or less well-known authors doesn´t work well, whereby the objective of providing credible content with the Authorship integration cannot be optimally met. Even only 7% of Google’s own products have Authorship integrations. This creates another challenge for the cooperation: The data should be compared with a free base (Wikipedia).

Structured Data

In addition, the webmasters should provide structured data or raw data on the Internet to give Google a basis for the “answer result page”. Marcus asked, “Who needs websites these days?”. As a fundamental building block of the structured web Marcus called the RDF (Resource Description Framework).

Since the users can compare directly on the SERP, for website operators in the future it is more and more important to invest in good Rich Snippets.

Understand, not just index!

[Tweet “They teach Google reading and learning like a school child.”]

The goal is to optimize the Internet itself, not the sites in it. Search engines should be able to understand really complex questions and answers – away from the keywords we used a few years ago. For example, Google should understand what a brand stands for. The so-called Phrase Indexing could do this, but also for the evaluation of links this would play an important role .

In the end it should be shown the best answer to multiple search request variations on the same theme. That is the task of the Hummingbird update. The people are asking the search engine using real questions instead of direct keywords . This fact is e.g. continued and further promoted by the Voice Searches in smartphones and other mobile devices .

Google will be able to relate temporally concatenated searches to each other. Is for example the first query “Where was Mozart born? “, so Google has to relate the second request “How big was he?” to the first and trace it back to Mozart. This called Marcus “Conversational Search”.

Google gives answers before questions are asked

With Google Now the search engine tries to date the answers already before the users are looking for them. Here, Google is very strong with personalization and context. Implicit aspects are becoming increasingly important and increasingly less static results are the consequence. However, the problem with an increasing individualization is the increasingly selective perception. Even in a not logged in state Google uses approximately 57 signals to personalize search results or answers. This excludes new opportunities for creative actions or thoughts and the users do not know, what they are missing.

To this end, Marcus showed a short commercial: “There are no regular results on Google anymore


This is a post written by Johanna Langer, an SEO Account Director & Conversion Optimization Specialist with the agency blueSummit in Munich. She also worked for the Scout24 group as SEO specialist and has many years of experience in online marketing. Johanna also has a real passion for horse riding.

 

Tags

Written By
This post was written by an author who is not a regular contributor to State of Digital. See all the other regular State of Digital authors here. Opinions expressed in the article are those of the contributor and not necessarily those of State of Digital.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.