How New Ways To Search Will Affect Your Marketing

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote “Change alone is unchanging” and this certainly applies to how we search for information. Our purpose here is to help you understand how new ways to search will affect your marketing.

As of March 2021, Google search is now entirely mobile-first. We explained this earlier in “How Mobile-First Ranking Works.” Because the majority of searches now occur on mobile devices, Google will index your mobile content instead of the desktop version of your website content.

Google My Business continues to evolve and is now Google Business Profile. Ads for your competition may now appear in your local profile and spam ads continue to be a nuisance. This appears to be a subtle campaign to encourage you to switch from organic search results to paid ads. However, during the pandemic, Google My Business and Google Maps worked with businesses who found themselves temporarily closed or only offering take-out/delivery services to keep search results as up-to-date and as accurate as possible. Let Tate Design help you update your listing now that businesses are expanding their hours of operation and what they can offer customers.

According to a 2022 Semrush study, zero-click searches—searches that keep the viewer on Google and never result in a click to another website—accounted for between 17.3% (on mobile devices) and 25.6% (on desktop computers) of Google searches. This means many people were quickly skimming the information that immediately popped up. Tate Design has been successful in this area with Google Business Profile pages, original content that does well in organic search (45.1% on smartphones and 43.1% on desktops according to the Semrush report), material for the “People Also Ask” box of related questions and answers, and websites that establish their clients’ expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. All of these appeal to how people quickly search without clicking.

Google has redesigned the look of its listings. It is now harder to distinguish between unpaid listings and paid ads. This may mean fewer clicks for you. If most of your target market uses a mobile phone to search, you might want to test results between organic SEO and a paid ad.

Visual search is on the rise. It is preferred by 74% of customers; 26% still have success with keyword searches. Viewers—both on smartphones and desktops—want to find what they see other people have. “Shop the look” and similar visual search features have been shown to increase website sales by 20%. You can satisfy their need with high-quality images that are searchable with Pinterest, Bing, and Google.

Voice search is also increasing, which is why you need to optimize for voice search. Over 70% of those in a HubSpot survey had used voice search in the last month. Almost half of the population uses voice search to research products. Improved artificial intelligence (AI), including more natural speech patterns and better speech recognition, have enabled Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant, and Siri to answer more questions. Let Tate Design help you create content that will answer questions about your business and your area of expertise.

Tate Design has a well-earned and award-winning expertise in digital marketing and advertising including search engine marketing, online advertising, content marketing, and search engine optimization. Let us give you an advantage in the ever-changing world of search. Call us at 610.725.0702 or e-mail [email protected] to get started.

Last updated January 2023