2016: emerging trends on search; what are you predicting?

[Whitey]

This last year many of us participated in some great thoughts and discussion around trends that we were predicting around search [webmasterworld.com...]

Here's some of my thoughts for the coming year :

- major technology device disrupters not in sight to establish themselves.
- Google continues to build it's own enhanced content layers into it's search results forcing out SERP listings. Pay or be gone
- Penguin and Panda still unforgiving and a suggestion/sign that Google has established whitelists for a limited range of branded players, no matter what you do in key monetized verticals
- mobile continuing to grow on search
- brief and visual is better as millennials drive shorter, faster more convenient, communication and information
- links will count even less than before ( and be harder to get )
- brands / now they are going to feel an increasing squeeze on their organic listings

What trends can you see on the horizon, what is it telling you, and how will you and your competitors embrace the new landscape thru 2016.... / thoughts ?

[jmccormac]

Google is so introspective it's quite amazing.

Based on the moronic Panda and Animal Farm efforts, it is probably something to do with where the Google people have their heads situated.

Regards...jmcc

[Whitey]

The OP relates to Google Search, but .....

'Control everything'

On Monday, Mr Zuckerberg said he would start to build the AI with technology that is already out there and teach it to understand his voice to control everything in his home from music and lights to temperature.

"This should be a fun intellectual challenge to code this for myself," Mr Zuckerberg said.

"I'll teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell," he said. "I'll teach it to let me know if anything is going on in Max's (his daughter's) room that I need to check on when I'm not with her."

For Facebook, he added that the system would help him visualize data in virtual reality and help him build better services, as well as lead his company.

His announcement comes as Facebook is in the midst of AI initiatives such as building an assistant through its Messenger app for users.
[bbc.com...] .

..... the appetite to control everything personalised for advertising purposes is on.

I predict that Google will intensify observation of trends coming from Facebook's "visionary" activity and see if and where it can bake it into it's technology platforms for both information retrieval and personalised interaction. Could Google make room for an increase in "gadgets", beyond the smartphone, that blend via search to organise your home etc.

( Don't laugh .... Google Maps is a critical gadget, merged with search, that could likely be part of the control with your vehicles soon ). European and US car manufacturers, such as Ford, BMW, Audi etc. are combining forces to develop "share" technology that they say is too expensive to do in isolation ). There are all sorts of implications around media delivery in vehicles and interacting technologies..

[fathom]

ORCA will arrive on scene!

[Nutterum]

I think I arrived too late in to the thread but here is my list :

- Early Tech for IOT across brands and "device" searchability ( a long shot this, but a plausibility non the less)
- Google loosing some ground against Bing/Yahoo (no more than few percentages but still)
- Heavier Https ranking signal boost and further https adoption push from Google
- Cloud First Mobile Devices disrupting the SE sector creating opportunities
- Panda and Penguin becoming part of the core algo and merging together to become a new Animal
- Heavy increase in general SERP volatility due to the above point. Weather forecasts of 80+ degrees being the new sunshine norm
- Local SERPS going through another overhaul, spam, review and G+ post SEO techniques become obsolete (this is partly already happening)
- App indexing and app content become the new SEO optimization heaven
- Mobilegeddon v 2.0

I know some of this is closer to science fiction but I just can`t discard a good conspiracy theory :)

[aristotle]

- Panda and Penguin becoming part of the core algo and merging together to become a new Animal

That would be the opposite of the trend of the last few years, in which the algorithm seems to have evolved into a juxtaposition of mostly independent pieces which don't harmonize or work well together.

[JS_Harris]

I predict that Google learned from their caffeine experiments and have resolved themselves to updating the top few spots of result pages much, much more slowly and that this will continue. Finding new content and ranking it appropriately is a daunting task which Google does well but I think they've learned that a touch of human interaction is still required for those top few spots which garner most of the clicks. A spam site in those spots is detrimental to their reputation.

I predict that Google will continue on with their three tiered approach to site ranking. Products/information/opinion all require a different approach and opinion is the hardest to rank. Product rankings require a reputable seller, information accuracy requires fact checking which Google automates but opinion motives are much harder to gauge and so I think personal blogs full of personal opinions will continue to be tough to rank for any product or informational search.

Commit to a full store experience, relegate your site to a support position with qualified trust worthy information or put opinions online at your own risk for best results, a mix of the three doesn't seem to do very well at the moment and I don't suspect that will change.

Useful content floats, and will continue to do so. I think human raters ask themselves if a page is helpful and if the answer is no, or it's one of 1000's regurgitating the same helpful info, it has zero chance of sneaking into the top 3 spots in search, that will continue and rightfully so.

I predict that fancy new methods of personalizing results will continue but that the core of what Google is will not change. If you can't put out content that is better than the currently ranked top 3 then you're out of luck in the eyes of a human rater and you probably don't want to fail in front of those eyes too often. Thankfully every URL is an island to them so you have many chances to make your site stick for one subject or another. It's unknown how many thumbs down you can get from them before the algo stops submitting a page from your site for their review, they are the expensive part of Google ranking after all. If they no longer see your stuff then it's likely you can no longer get top results and will languish in the spots the algo CAN rank you in.

I predict that informational sites will continue to lose the most traffic to Google's attempt to be the content provider from within the results. I also think that doing this will cost Google some users since that's not what visitors want from Google (remember the days when finding new sites was Google's best feature?)

My wildest prediction: Google tires of quoting and ranking Wikipedia #1 and Wikipedia tires of begging for donations. Google buys Wikipedia.

[Whitey]

My wildest prediction: Google tires of quoting and ranking Wikipedia #1 and Wikipedia tires of begging for donations. Google buys Wikipedia.

Ouch - there goes the free web. Just goes to show Google accepts certain sites as authority regardless, not just brands. I can't see this changing anytime soon.

[jmccormac]

Well Google plundered Wikipedia with its "Knowledge Graph/Wikipedia scraper". They've got all that content for free and are monetising it.

Regards...jmcc

[aristotle]

Well Google plundered Wikipedia with its "Knowledge Graph/Wikipedia scraper".

Well Wikipedia plundered thousands of original websites to get its content.

[fathom]

Well Google plundered Wikipedia with its "Knowledge Graph/Wikipedia scraper". They've got all that content for free and are monetising it.

Regards...jmcc

<snip>

[en.m.wikipedia.org...]

Important note: The Wikimedia Foundation does not own copyright on Wikipedia article texts and illustrations. It is therefore pointless to email our contact addresses asking for permission to reproduce articles or images, even if rules at your company or school or organization mandate that you ask web site operators before copying their content.

The only Wikipedia content you should contact the Wikimedia Foundation about is the trademarked Wikipedia/Wikimedia logos, which are not freely usable without permission.

Permission to reproduce and modify text on Wikipedia has already been granted to anyone anywhere by the authors of individual articles as long as such reproduction and modification complies with licensing terms (see below and Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks for specific terms). Images may or may not permit reuse and modification; the conditions for reproduction of each image should be individually checked. The only exceptions are those cases in which editors have violated Wikipedia policy by uploading copyrighted material without authorization, or with copyright licensing terms which are incompatible with those Wikipedia authors have applied to the rest of Wikipedia content. While such material is present on Wikipedia (before it is detected and removed), it will be a copyright violation to copy it. For permission to use it, one must contact the owner of the copyright of the text or illustration in question; often, but not always, this will be the original author.

If you wish to reuse content from Wikipedia, first read the Reusers' rights and obligations section. You should then read the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License.

As far as understanding they are covered by law.

[edited by: aakk9999 at 2:44 pm (utc) on Jan 7, 2016]

[aristotle]

So Wikipedia plundered its content from thousands of original websites, and then Google plundered it from Wikipedia.

[fathom]

Aristole that's a bit of a stretch.

You can create your own content and place it on Wikipedia... How is that plundering?

If you as a publisher infringes on the rights of others and added that to Wikipedia it doesn't take much to have that infringement exposed and removed.

On the other: Google links to the sources for use in KG which is all they must do and that also isn't plundering.

I'm sure folks can find examples of actual scraping and plundering but this isn't that.

[aristotle]

fathom -- There's at least a dozen pages in Wikipedia that were created using content from my original articles. This was done without my permission. In most cases they changed the words around a little bit and used my article as the reference, as if that makes it okay. In these cases almost all of the content came from my original article.

Evidently you don't understand how Wikipedia works -- they even say in their guidelines that you're not supposed to add content unless you cite a source for it.

[EditorialGuy]

I predict that people who had beefs with Google and Wikipedia in 2015 will continue to have beefs with Google and Wikipedia in 2016.

[fathom]

fathom -- There's at least a dozen pages in Wikipedia that were created using content from my original articles. This was done without my permission. In most cases they changed the words around a little bit and used my article as the reference, as if that makes it okay. In these cases almost all of the content came from my original article.

Contact wikipedia with your claims. It is difficult to make an unauthorized derivative that tosses out creative expression while keeping a quality standard. If you can see your original work you should be able to prove it.

This is the reason I file all my work with the Copyright Office.

Evidently you don't understand how Wikipedia works -- they even say in their guidelines that you're not supposed to add content unless you cite a source for it.

Evidently you don't.

Anyone can publish a page, anyone can change the current pages, and anyone can cite sources. So yes all material need sources, but not everyone that edits has equal knowledge about Wikipedia.

Posting your discontent in a forum doesn't help. Get involved if you want to make changes free of legal costs.

YES EditorialGuy that will stand the test of time!

[aristotle]

fathom -- Wikipedia is the last place I'll spend any of my time on, or worrying about. Everything I said about it is true, and if somebody doesn't believe me, I couldn't care less. I've noticed that you like to get into long inane arguments, but I've got better things to do, so if you want to keep discussing this, you'll have to find someone else to do it with.

[Whitey]

Hey guys - I really love the vibrancy of this conversation about Wikipedia, but think we're drifting from the OP. Can we take that conversation somewhere else if it does not relate to emerging trends. ( You could however, continue with your thoughts and back it up with evidence that relates your thinking to trends, and it's effects on Google ).

@Nutterum - no way are you late to this thread. Hopefully it will be open for inputs for a while. The more the merrier.

Last year we had way more inputs than this year on the emerging trends thread. I'm not taking anything away from the great inputs so far, but does the lack of inputs indicate a trend in itself?

[Rlilly]

Google will be delivering as much information in the snippets about a Keyword as possible. The more your site is an information hub about the keywords you target, the better your chances are. Content rich informative & intuitive pages is what Google is looking for.

[fathom]

Last year we had way more inputs than this year on the emerging trends thread. I'm not taking anything away from the great inputs so far, but does the lack of inputs indicate a trend in itself?

The amount of predictions is of lesser importance ... Accurately predicting something might seem to be the better gauge. What 2015 trends were predicted correct?

Course the more vague a prediction is the more likely you can at least slice something into the rough.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[EditorialGuy]

Fathom, thanks for posting that link. I perused last year's thread, and I must say that the predictions (and the complaints about Google) aren't much different from this year's.

[fathom]

While Google can certainly advance their own schedule, and they may have with their BrainRank, but 2017 is when their PageRank patent ends.

Moz, Majestic, and AHREFS can then come out of the closet and note their stuff was just PageRank in drag!

...the real question is "will they?"

[Whitey]

Google will be delivering as much information in the snippets about a Keyword as possible. The more your site is an information hub about the keywords you target, the better your chances are. Content rich informative & intuitive pages is what Google is looking for.

Will that prediction hold equally to e-commerce sites competing with brands?

[tangor]

Wikipedia will end up with a class action (me for one) re: their "editors" refusal to take note that content on their site was stolen from creators (been there, done that, and they defied me to prove it and I did... removed for a day then right back up again!)

G will continue to lose trust and the migration to Bing for RESULTS will escalate, and alternatives Yandex and Duck Duck Go will pick up the slack.

At some point "corporate mentality" will meet resistance from the rank and file.

Adsense earnings will continue to plummet, having moved to the bottom feeder level of product.

Users will also play a larger part by installing ad blockers and script killers.

HTML5 video will replace flash.

Silent caps on American broadband being done by stealth will create user backlash (eg. att with 150gb now on their "top" 6mbps) plan.

Net Neutrality will be proved hollow and tiered service will reign. The EU will continue to muck up the works with more litigation. Data transfers between Left and Right side of the Big Pond will create more difficulties for ecommerce, and governments will up the anti re: content "fair play" (censorship) control.

Could go on. Won't. This is a Google SEO thread (which some have forgotten).

2016 will be an interesting year (as that ancient Chinese philosopher once said).