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Google is shifting to a product company from operating a science fair. — This article was written is 2019 —
The more time you spend INSIDE Google’s collection of digital properties – the more they will monetize You with Advertising – YouTube – Shopping – Travel – Play – Maps – Podcasts – Gmail – Photo storage .. and Business Applications in Workspace to mention a small subset. Google Cloud offerings for business which is competing with Amazon, Microsoft Azure and Oracle is different thing for another discussion.
This Reduces Click Offs to other Websites.
You Website and other fantastic content will get Vacuumed Up and re-oriented into a Google layout – simple altering the pixels on the screen. Magical. Your structured text becomes a Google Answer block. Good copywriting becomes Rich Snippets. Just reformatting the content on the Web into better compelling output in a user interface is a business!
But your precise Website just became less important since it got ‘relocated’ and ‘disappeared’ into the Google brand when the necessary pieces of your content is presented in the Search Results. The incentive by Google is to offer everything IN Google so there is no additional Click Off to some other Website beyond what is offered IN Google.
Click Off reduces the probability of the potential customer making a transaction and buying something. Empty shopping carts litter the Web with unfinished intentions.
Google Business Profile Manager (previously known as Google My Business) is a business profile like a listing directory on Google with Super Powers that is integrated with Google Maps – Reviews – Advertising – Shopping – Search Console and much more – is probably an adequate Business Website for many companies whether product or service offerings.
But you really need a separate Website too; for all your static or less dynamic content. Confused. More is better.
Building better technology is underlying the new user experiences ( and User Interface Layouts! ) to achieve more relevant and desired search results for the users from very difficult language nuances. An amazing technology producer at that. Not that easy to use beyond the consumer facing apps. Probably more of a fragmented software tools company or building block offering to software developers that pull it together into useful solutions.
Update 2023: there is a huge AI battle going on in Search and information discovery methods – after years of AI chewing on data to train it – with Bing AI Chat GPT vs Google Bard going head to head to establish new positions. As they said in, Hunger Games, “and may the odds be ever in your favor!”
Author at www.pinhead.cloud
For example, talking into your mobile phone is a longer search (a long tail search) interpretation and is providing more intent signals to Google to unscramble (decode) what is being queried for. Googles new UX/UI page layouts are reflecting different schema (scheme’s?) to both the advertising community AND the user.
Advertisements appear to be changing with bold black text label identifiers (“labeled Ad”) to make it known that a Paid Advertisement is placed right up against and probably on top of an organic search result on a Google SERP page.
It is a bit sneakier than the ever changing yet obvious text color of green (imagine Ads with clever placement in black now to ‘hide’ in plain sight ?) and appears that an organic search can still achieve the famous 4 pack of “stacked” results packaged together versus the infamous organic 3 pack. The Paid Ad will in fact pay up plenty of money for that Top position! It was huge (and still is) to achieve placement in the 3 Pack Stack from investing in great stand out content development on the Web that Google deems worthy of associating with their brand prominently in a page one search result.
The beef here is that Paid Advertisement placed directly adjacent to or on top of and blending into the organic search result pages (SERPS) with a different less obvious color obfuscates the hard grind of natural competition for placement relevance near the top of search results.
Paid was not “earned” – so it might be sleazy or corrupt with placement association with limited color or shading differentiation placed next to an organic search results; almost touching on it. Pay to Play in action here.
Update 2023 – Paid advertisement continues to push down great organic search results from appearing in a viable rank order that competes for vertical viewing space — organic content is going practically into oblivion, especially on mobile. Instead of trying to win directly with Google search, Partnering with the big branded Websites that have great domain authority by adding content value that boosts their development is a very viable method.
There is a lack of creativity, compelling mixed media and copywriting that punches through the vast Advertising noise. Being a sole Web property is going to be a rough path to be found and compete for business online.
I thought I was seeing things when the 3 Pack search engine results changed into a 4 Pack of results without the color green for the additional Advertisement displayed!
Methods and tools for online digital advertising to compete for the consumer to make an informed choice on a Google search result page; resulting in a ‘click off’ to the advertiser’s Website is changing rapidly.
Google is moving right into the Transaction by pulling the online pieces together into a sufficient UI / UX user layout presentation so that no additional click off to another Website is necessary. Gate keeping? Walled garden?
Google online property portfolio facings – YouTube, Mobile Discovery and Voice Assistant will be more a more prominent, integrated and a more complete experience going forward.
Ranking high and prominent on the Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) is the pinnacle of success for your information to be seen. Business success can be determined on one UX screen. And Google is owning way more of the screen size, complexity and format of the User Experience to achieve more satisfying search results.
Why ? Enough information can be amalgamated right on the Google UI to perform the intent of the end user desire – to transact, locate or experience the Search intent.
Their solutions are very sophisticated and they change rapidly. There is no single book to read; it’s not that straightforward nor simple I assure you. You have to dig into it and experiment.
How do you get started optimizing for the next phase of Google Search/Discovery and the Mobile Web … before you get squished?
Do You Have a Google Business Profile in the Google Business Directory?
Never Heard of That? More than 1/2 of all U.S. Businesses owners will say what’s that?; which is astounding since Page Rank in Google Search Results (SERPs) is quite significant for online and brick and mortar success. Google is settling in on their new naming conventions and these will probably stay for awhile.
This is not a cookbook or recipe! It’s probably more like a Field Guide or something that functions like an old favorite called, “Europe Thru the Back Door”. Make you own notes and search for the right topics and key words to locate the “How To” pages.
I just spent one year almost every day running multiple online business rapid prototypes and proof of concept experiments to determine new ways to compete online in Travel, Hotels, Adventure Touring, Food Nightlife, eCommerce, Online Ad Networks, Listing Directories and Social eShopping.
Online segment shifts: Airbnb is crushing Hotels and just moving into Guided Experience offerings — pretty clever. Timeshare has been impacted substantially with Airbnb flexibility and scale.
Mobile is a Thing now. It’s been declared by Google. So it is.
Conversational Queries are a Thing now too. Voice discovery and the actions that are taken on Mobile and in Automotive infotainment are huge.
Click off’s will be minimal from Google to other Websites.
Maps are just so much more! The data just hides behind the colored Pinhead marker (that’s us www.pinhead.cloud ) … so you can drive without paging thru the Website. Google will give you a summary or read it to you; from their Website …. probably not yours. Location context is huge.
Now we are ready to talk about your Google Business Profile; your Google Business Listing in the Google Directory.
It’s your gateway to “Get on the Map”!
And a bunch of other cool things that come under you Google Business Profile.
This is a starting point to connect with potential customers on Google Search and Maps.
Hint: Connecting right into the Google Maps API is huge. Build your neighborhood. Be a good local citizen. And be a great global citizen with Discover based search. More later on this …
Hint #2: We like our local business friends ( and frienimies(sp) ) and promote them on our Website, on Facebook and Instagram … and just getting started in WhatsApp. Think like Mr Rogers and be a good neighbor. Google rewards good neighbors.
Don’t laugh.
Starting from scratch in August 2019, this online Hotel and Adventure Tour company generated ~150,000 Organic Web Hits … generating hundreds of phone calls, web chats, text messages, Facebook Instant Messenger inquiries, Instagram impressions, emails … and a fuzzy amount of Online Affiliate bookings and inquiries.
What is 100,000 organic Traffic Web hits a month x 12 ?
That’s 1,200,00 Million quality hits per Year to potentially monetize.
Online Formula: a) Great informative subject matter (content) , b) a good Mobile website user experience, c) quality Authoritative writing, d) vibrant/positive Social media interaction with comments, rating and messages, e) probably Yelp or Google Reviews and f) Affiliate links into large Traffic aggregators.
You’re cooking with Gas now!
Note: Some of the Affiliate Traffic is commision based, so it’s not pure organic since they are advertising all over the Web and take a Fee if there is successful conversion.
To add further confusion to this meteoric rise in Organic Traffic, we are running 3 different Websites as an experiment with extensive Affiliate traffic partnering in Hotel / Adventure Travel and tracking detailed inbound traffic. We didn’t want to touch the original company URL yet since all the reviews and links are stuck to that old name; which is not positioned well for next decade … with Airbnb is crushing and disrupting the huge Hotel & Travel sector.
1) the vintage original non-Mobile friendly Website; however still remains stuck in first position on SERPS (we are baffled). Not only is it unreadable on Mobile; it’s dark brown yet continues to be a fan favorite for an adventure to the Old West ! We are working to lift compelling visual identity parts of the brand into 2020; but the name URL must change to be successful. Trickey.
2) the new Hotel and Adventure Tour company URL positioned to compete heavily on Services with Airbnb (recently Airbnb has introduced Experiences and Adventures online in addition to the Airbnb magazine .. and is nicely executed)
3) experimenting with the new ‘auto-magic’ Google Website ( Google My Business = GMB ) built mystically with business and visual assets lurking around the Web which are instantly (less than 20 seconds ) assembled into a decent mobile friendly page with some limited design options and has enough on the page to get inquiries and conversions. We have the new larger 50 page Website placed into the Google My Business configuration … and you will see this question being asked in the GMB forum.
We will just remain confused and let Google grab our online assets and eCommerce transaction partners to assemble the new page layouts acros their Web properties and facings.
If you can beat 150,000 quality organic Web hits in 90 days and get 2% conversion into the cash register ( from scratch )with a different strategy … please ring us up!
btw … www.pinhead.com is still stealth
