What do You Think the Biggest Search Trends will Be in 2020?
-
Just interested to hear everyone's thoughts. Personally I think that, even though voice search is already pretty big - it's about to get much, much larger and this may even entirely change the infrastructure of the web. What are your thoughts for changes in search 2020?
-
Thanks for your response EGOL, I always really value your comments. I think this makes a lot of sense. How many times have people tried to game the SERPs with minor tactical deployments, only to see Google drop it all within 6 months? Focusing on delivering that which Google's algorithms attempt to seek (high quality content), can only be positive
-
Thank you EGOL!
That is kind of you to say & you improved my answer.
I agree with everything you said my friend!
All the best,
Tom
-
Thank you Effect digital great post!
i agree E-A-T showed a big difference in 2019 & I think it is the start.
All the best,
Tom
-
Tom Zickell has it....
Honestly, money spent on high-quality content and high-quality work will go up not a very sexy answer but an honest one.
Twenty years ago, content conquered the SERPs. It still does today. I think it still will tomorrow.
If you listen to Google when they say "do this"... "do that".... "make this code".... "make that code".... "mark this up".... "mark that up".... then, next month, Google doesn't use that stuff any more. My point is that chasing "trends of the year" is very costly.
So from Tom's answer... spend your time on high-quality content and you will not go wrong (unless you write mediocre content and think that it is 10x).
And, from his answer... "high-quality-work"... to me that means... improve your content (text, images, data, media), improve your navigation, improve the appearance of your site, make your title and description elicit clicks. This is old school stuff that we should focus on always.
"Trends of the Year" are often (usually) decoys away from what is long term successful.
-
Thanks Gaston
I especially agree with your first point, as I believe that infrastructure (structured data) will be critical to the 'voice-web' which may replace large swathes of 'visual' search. Not all of it, but large chunks of it
-
Thanks for your answers Tom I think I agree with most, especially the increasing utility of BERT and the increasing focus on E-A-T. I don't know about you, but I feel that E-A-T was significantly tightened in 2019, and that's set to continue
-
My guess is that 2020 trends (and the big news around search) will be centred in:
- More Structured data and more complexity under it.
- Google absorbing niches with their products/Featured snippets.
- Higher understanding and the need for more complexity in content.
We cannot deny that Google is getting better and better at understanding content and improving their knowledge about users. This means that, as its happening, there will be better results for users at the cost of websites offering better user-focused content and more "digested" data to google (structured data)
A fourth point would be that there will be less and less "organic" real estate in SERPs that websites can compete for. We have enough data proving that every time there are more and more SERPs with 2 or more Featured Snippets (image carousel, PAA and Knowledge graph, just to name a few).
Best of luck to everyone in the incoming year,
Gaston -
I believe featured snippets will be almost impossible to change it seems once that they are cemented in for more than a month or two they are not going to be volatile anymore. Thus we cannot capture them as easily.
Google will continue to give more SERP real estate to Ads / PPC to take it away from organic especially on mobile. Also, no click answers will become more and more prominent.
BERT & User-Focused Optimization
Content will have to get better and better and better because the Internet is growing (and please don't quote me on this) something like 10 times every three months more websites with great content means less space at the top of the SERPs higher-quality more expertise authority and trust E-A-T.
I agree with you that voice search is a huge game-changer. I want to see it adopted a little bit more but I do agree with you.
Honestly, money spent on high-quality content and high-quality work will go up not a very sexy answer but an honest one.
All the best,
Tom
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
75% Overnight Drop in Organic Search Traffic
On April 10th my organic search clicks dropped 75% overnight. I have never seen anything like it. What Google algorithm change could have caused this? I have no manual actions and my indexed page count is about the same. I have noticed that several queries that I was number one for including my brand have dropped by anywhere from two to ten spots. The brand dropping out of the first spot is what really gets me. There is nothing similar to it at all. My speed score is moderate, so I don't think that is it. My site was down most of the day on the 9th or 10th, but that has never caused a drop in search clicks and the next day they were about the same. I noticed that the CDC now occupies the number one spot for my brand. Even though the exact brand name is nowhere in the text of the CDC page. I think this might be due to Google trying to help official health organizations do better due to COVID19, but the queries I have dropped on have nothing to do with Coronavirus. Also, none of my other sites have seen this type of problem. Only the health site seems affected. I recently did a press release campaign and my link counts are up, so I don't that is it either. The brand page is https://stdcarriers.com and an example of an effected query is Celebrities with STDs.
Algorithm Updates | | STDCarriers0 -
Search Results Above Adwords
Hi, Can anyone help me in understanding the results which are appearing above adwords in the screenshot below. These are the knowledge graph results or something else. strip_zpsmxsufx55.png.html
Algorithm Updates | | SameerBhatia0 -
Would having links on wikipedia help search engine rankings?
I am wondering that having a listing on Wikipedia would help search engine rankings in general? I know all of the Wikipedia links are no-follow links but I think it'd still help to rank higher on search engines. What are your thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | ahmetkul1 -
Image Thumbnail in Google Mobile Search results
HI all, We can see that Google is now showing thumbnails of products in the search results on mobile.
Algorithm Updates | | RetailClicks
Very nice, but... What are specs of our snippets to show? Cause i see it at other search results of websites, but not ours?
Please help us out. Thanks!
Jeroen http://searchengineland.com/google-mobile-search-results-now-showing-images-snippets-2589190 -
If our link profile is too "blog link" heavy, will that be all that bad?
We own a site that lends itself extremely well to getting boat loads of links, only down side is that those on the boat are all bloggers. We are selling a product that retails for $6.89 per unit. They are for women. Our target market is any woman/girl who is between 14 and 50. Even better, our cost per unit is only about $0.40. So what we've been doing is sending them out by the hundreds to legit fashion blogs all the way down to blogspot mommy bloggers and the reviews have poured in, literally all of them positive. Moral of the story, we have a good product, and no shortage of bloggers that would be willing to write us up a legit, human written (by a red-blooded American none-the-less) on almost exclusively legit blogs. We're not trying to manipulate what they say, how they link to us, what anchor text they use or anything. We're just sending them product, asking that they do a review and give us a link and that's it. Our worry is that given the nature of the site and the product offering, it's going to be easy to get these legit blog links, but more difficult to get links that "aren't on blogs". Is this going to hurt us, or will Big Google be kind and realize this isn't shady manipulation. It's legit part of our ongoing effort to get the word out. Further evidence that our campaign isn't to manipulate (although we all know we're in it for the links) is that so far 75% of our sales have been driven by these reviews. A few of the bigger sites that have done reviews have each directly resulted in 10+ sales from that single review. So what are all ya'll's thoughts? I suspect we'll be OK, but wanted some others to provide their views.
Algorithm Updates | | AarcMediaGroup0 -
Author Photo No Longer Showing Up in Search
My author photo has been showing up in search for quite some time but starting today I noticed that it no longer does even though the structured data testing tool still has it showing up. It only seems to show up on my google+ profile. Anyone notice the same thing?
Algorithm Updates | | casper4340 -
How to do SEO for Google places.New trends and tips
How to do SEO for Google places.New trends and tips .Most clients wants their biz in Google places in First page .
Algorithm Updates | | innofidelity0 -
What do you think Google analyzes for SERP ranking?
I've been doing some research trying to figure out how the Google algorithm works. The one thing that is constant is that nothing is constant. This makes me believe that Google takes a variable that all sites have and divides it by that number. One example would be taking the load time in MS and dividing it by the total number or points the website scored. This would give all of the websites a random appearance since there that variable would throw off all the other constants. I'm going to continue doing research but I was wondering what you guys think matters in the Google Algorithm. -Shane
Algorithm Updates | | Seoperior0