Google Rolls Out Search Updates to Improve Search Experience

Google has recently been announcing new features to improve the overall quality of every Internet search. It started last month when they announced the mobile friendly Google algorithm, which gives all mobile friendly sites higher rankings in their searches in order to give every user the best experience. You can read more about the google mobile algorithm update here. Three more additions Google will make this month are going to change how SEO has worked in the past.

Twitter Search Integration

The first major change is happening because Twitter announced in February that they once again will be sharing their content with Google. Twitter did this in the past from 2009-2011, but after they stopped, very little information from twitter remained in Google’s databases. Breaking down this barrier will allow people to be exposed to Twitter without being a user of the social channel. This is intended to benefit the over 500 million people who do visit Twitter every month, while also expanding Twitter’s growth. This month Twitter posts have already been integrated into iOS which creates easy access from most apple products. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said during Twitter’s Q1 earnings call on April 28th, “The goal is to get people to consume content and engage with that content whether they log in or not.”

Search Box Algorithm

Google has also made it even easier to find answers with a simple Google search with their Search Box Algorithm. When questions are placed in the search bar, Google now bolds the exact answer. From a consumer’s point of view, this makes things even easier to guarantee that the first website they visit will have the answer they are looking for. This changes how content marketers should update their websites as well. Instead of putting context keywords, websites should now make sure that the answers to multiple specific questions related to their website can easily be accessed.

Google Lite

With all of these new advancements in technology, Google has recognized and begun trying to fix the issue of Internet sites taking an excessively long time to load. Indonesia is a country where most people only have access to 2G Internet connections, so Google decided to use this country as their trial run with Google lite. Google lite is a new way to decrease data use and increase the speed of the Internet on any mobile device. The transition essentially omits all of the images on a website and shows the page with just the necessary information they find people typically search for when they click on these specific links. Pages are reported to load 4 times faster in this format and use 80% less data. For everyone curious to know whether their websites can benefit from this change, Google has also reported that sites are seeing 50% more traffic with the faster loading pages. Regardless of this advantage, Google lite for your mobile devices is optional and you can opt to keep the traditional look of the web pages instead.

Google has been changing how fast technology advances for years, and their new updates are no exception.