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
-
Huge difference in browser and search console rankings: Any latest updates?
Hi, We know that it's common to see some ranking difference in browser and GSC for a keyword. But I can see there is a huge difference from last 3 months. We position at 15 to 20th position when we search in browser (different IPs without signing in to any Google account; where as the rank in GSC varies between 35 around. I wonder if anything changed in the way Google reports and does anybody face the same issue? Is there anything we can do about this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Confuse search engine result
When We check few keywords in Google.com from India, we can see these keywords perfectly listed in the first google search result pages. But when I checked these keywords in USA chorme, Mozilla, internet explorer Brower using one of our USA client pc using remote desktop, we really shocked that these keywords not listed in the USA country. Which means I am an Indian, if I check these keywords from India using google.com, I can see but if I check these keywords in USA country PC browser, I do not see. Please help us
Algorithm Updates | | Intellect0 -
Why do we have so many pages scanned by bots (over 250,000) and our biggest competitors have about 70,000? Seems like something is very wrong.
We are trying to figure out why last year we had a huge (80%) and sudden (within two days) drop in our google searches. The only "outlier" in our site that we can find is a huge number of pages reported in MOZ as scanned by search engines. Is this a problem? How did we get so many pages reported? What can we do to bring the number of searched pages back to a "normal" level? BT
Algorithm Updates | | achituv0 -
Our organic search traffic went flat for 2 weeks Oct 2 - Oct 17\. It has since resumed to more normal numbers. Anyone have any idea why this would happen?
Does anyone have any insight as to why our organic search traffic would go to nearly nothing for roughly a 2 week span Oct 2 - Oct 17th? Our regular traffic remained fairly consistent so we were still being indexed. It has now resumed to more normal numbers but I cannot think of anything we did that would make this happen? We did make a 302 switch to be a 301 permanent redirect on our site in early August but that is all I can think of? Any insight or help would be appreciated!
Algorithm Updates | | mwuest0 -
AS we using the keyword related to our link but we are not listed in first page of Google search
AS we using the keyword related to our link but we are not listed in first page of Google search, but our competitors using the same keyword , they are listing in first page. how we can short this problem and get into first page on search
Algorithm Updates | | krisanantha0 -
Impressions and search queries help
Hello, In the past month alone, my website www.shiftins.com has had a significant drop, about 50%, in my overall impressions and search queries (info from Google WMT). Now my target keywords have maintained their rankings but it looks like my site has dropped off the map for every other search term. I have not received any unnatural link warnings or anything of that sort so I don't think I have been penalized. Does anyone have an idea of what might have caused the decline and is there a solution to restore my prior status?
Algorithm Updates | | raph39880 -
Why is there no compiled list of the different types of search results on Google, and what the content qualifications are to generate those results?
Seems to me that this list should exist out there somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. Am I just not as good of a Googler as I thought I was?
Algorithm Updates | | Draftfcb0 -
New visitors by search engines nowadays in USA and Germany
Hello, anyone have current data, how many new visitors in average drive nowadays search engines? My source of Peter Kent´s book SEO for Dummies from 2006, says around about 50% in the USA. I guess nowadays the percentage is much less, because of the social media? Have anyone data to split this in organic and paid search driven visits also? Do you know also how many new visitors in average drive nowadays social media like Facebook, Twitter & Co ? Thanks,
Algorithm Updates | | Braumueller0