What's the future of search? And does it mean that the future of search marketing is just "good marketing"?

1. The Future of Search
WILL CRITCHLOW

2. This query really shouldn’t work

3. But it does

4. Understand, not just index

5. See reddit for more
Original thread

6. When someone searches for “best”
From Google Trends

7. They probably don’t mean a page
that says “best”

8. Watch this presentation for more
Read this. Watch this.

9. Present information better

10. There are a lot of cards

12. I have a theory that this is
positioned to train us to look in
the right hand sidebar

13. I have a theory that this is
positioned to train us to look in
the right hand sidebar

14. Sometimes UI helps refine the query

15. All of this enables
voice search

16. Live now in Chrome and on Android

17. “what time is it in New York?”

19. Query refinement
is called
“conversational
search”

20. Who talks to their phone?
I said

21. I’m coming round to the idea

22. Signed-in everywhere is
crucial

23. It’s really hard not to be signed in

24. Chrome sync is just the beginning
I predict we are going to see cookie sync

25. Android blurs the line with the web

26. Query enhancement is
improving

27. “london tube stations”
query
Old Query Model

28. explicit query
implicit query
iPhone user, on street in London
“london tube stations”
New Query Model

29. New Query Model

30. Query Scale
TIME
TOTALSIGNALINFORMATION
explicit signal
implicit signal

31. Query Scale
TIME
TOTALSIGNALINFORMATION
explicit signal
implicit signal

32. Query Scale
TIME
TOTALSIGNALINFORMATION
explicit signal
implicit signal

33. Query Scale
TIME
TOTALSIGNALINFORMATION
explicit signal
implicit signal

34. Query Scale
TIME
TOTALSIGNALINFORMATION
explicit signal
implicit signal

35. Where does this end?

36. My vision when we started Google 15
years ago was that eventually you
wouldn't have to have a search
query at all. You'd just have
information come to you as you
needed it.
-- Sergey Brin, Google

37. Queryless search

38. Is this even search?

39. Does it matter?
It certainly helps explain (not provided)

40. Let’s not forget the basics

41. Desktop search is still growing
That’s 20 billion searches / month in the US
2007 March 2013

42. Sites report growing mobile search
Via RKG

43. Hampered by measurement issues
Via RKG

44. ...but backed by Google statistics
% smartphone users searching every day
2011
2012
2011
2012

45. ...and converting like crazy

46. Social can be search too
That’s how I found the data on the previous slide

47. So is search marketing
becoming
“just good marketing”?

48. Google would like us to
think so

49. You might have noticed googlebot
coming round more often

50. The caffeine update enabled all the
more recent changes

51. No SEO
presentation is
complete without
an angry penguin

52. Penguin and Panda = progress
Bad links
Bad content

53. Their biggest win is spreading fear

54. Bad stuff still works short term
But brands are rightly scared (finally)

55. Coming soon: bad merchant update
Don’t make your customers angry

56. But not all of search is
regular marketing

57. Make pages primarily for
users, not for search
engines
-- Google webmaster guidelines
This used to go even further

58. These days we
feed the robot in
all kinds of ways
Robots.txt
Sitemaps
Schema
...etc

59. The future looks great for
search

60. The future looks great for
search marketers

61. Technical skills +
Data +
Building an audience

62. I’ve talked about this elsewhere
http://www.distilled.net/store/ll-2013-wc-critchlow/

63. WILL CRITCHLOW
Founder, Distilled
will.critchlow@distilled.net
@willcritchlow

64. Image creditshttp://www.flickr.com/photos/paolomargari/1992019542/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarit_arora/8543078505/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flysi/183272970/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yjv/4649068019/