From Search Engine to Publisher: Google’s Evolution & How We Can Thrive

Once, you could search Google and see this:

It’s a list of “organic” search results. A few ads, perhaps, but mostly content the search giant indexed and ranked by relevance and authority. Run the same search now, though, and you’ll see this:

At the top of the page, Google shows product listing ads. Then we see a paid search ad. Then a map. You’d have to scroll halfway down the page to find a traditional “organic” search result.

What’s Google doing? They’re becoming a publisher. Here’s how, why, and what you can do about it:

Reducing the Steps Between Question and Answer

Google’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Up to now, they’ve focused on organizing the world’s information through search. Now, they’re starting to refine their ability to make that information universally accessible and useful.

To do that, Google must make it easier for us to get from query to answer. They must make it a shorter trip. 

Searchers with high purchase intent used to take five steps, making only two of them on Google:

In Google’s revised search results, users take at most four steps, making all but the final one in the search result itself:

Informational searchers benefit, too. They used to search, click a result and read the answer on the relevant website:

Now, they search, view the results and get what they need without leaving Google:

Why? Because Google shows them a result like this:

“Search snippets” fill the top of the page. Snippets are chunks of information that answer a user’s question without requiring a click. That’s a fundamental change. While a search engine provides a list of resources that might answer a query, a publisher provides the answer.

Google is reducing steps by delivering more and more required information in the search result itself. That reduces the necessary steps between question and answer.

Google-As-Publisher

Recent research shows that answers embedded on the search results page reduce clickthru. Makes sense. If the answer is right in front of me, why click?

Google’s OK with that. As organic clicks from commercial intent searches become scarce, advertisers have to bid more on paid space. Remember the running shoe search result? Paid advertising is the only way to get above-the-fold visibility. Paid clicks increase in value. Higher ad revenue from commercial intent queries makes up for lost clicks on informational results. 

Google is trading answers to informational queries for paid clicks on shopping-related search results. They provide content and sell ads.

In other words, they’re becoming a publisher.

Implications

Google’s going to take an even bigger bite out of news and information sites’ traffic. Sites like Wikihow, which depend on information-seekers for their revenue, are going to lose quality traffic. 

News sites will lose traffic, too. Searchers won’t click through if they can get a list of headlines and profiles right on the search results page. While users may click on one of these results, they may just glance at the headlines and leave it at that. Or, they may click a single result and never return, depriving other publishers secondary and tertiary clicks.

Publishers are becoming Google’s competitors. For them, an already-tough environment is about to get downright ugly. 

At the same time, competition for organic rankings is going to rise. High-ranking, highly-relevant sites will have a better chance to grab precious real estate like the “answer box:”

And, ad cost inflation will accelerate as Google squeezes more and more advertisers into less and less space.

What to Do: Become Publish-worthy

It’s not all doom and gloom. Change offers opportunity, and few site owners have adjusted their search strategies to accommodate Google’s evolution. Follow the adage: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Become publish-worthy.

Offer publish-worthy information. Learn to write great answers. Don’t bury answers to questions far down the page. Put them front-and-center at the top of the page. That improves your shot at real estate like the answer box. While it costs clicks, the answer box does still generate traffic. 

Turn product info into informational content. If you sell online, find the most-asked questions about a product. Build the critical info right into the description. That changes your product description into publish-worthy Q&A and, like above, put you in a search snippet. 

Provide detail. Google isn’t delivering detailed answers on search results pages. They probably won’t for some time, because that would eat up too much advertising space. Lead with the answer. Then go into more detail, providing every bit of information a searcher might need.

Learn the technical side. Schema markup and clean code can impact Google’s ability to structure your content. Make it easy.

Up your game. I beat the copywriting drum all the time. Now, I’m going to hammer it. You must produce better writing. It generates attention. And, Google’s getting better and better at “reading” what you write. Quality impacts rankings. You control it. Invest in writing.

Place a call to action. It’s basic, but I’ll say it anyway. Embed a clear call to action on content pages. You can do it without being cheesy. Don’t turn your blog content into an ad. Keep it lightly-branded. But use a (small) fixed top-of-page “ribbon” to announce a sale or link to a related product. Or try one at the bottom of the page.

Take a Page from the Masters

The best traditional marketers learned to tell stories, embed information, and provide content worthy of consumption in their ads. They turned direct mail into publishing and ads into content worth passing around. They had to pay a fortune to distribute that content.

We have an advantage: We don’t have to turn information into print, radio, or television. We just need to execute. Learn the new rules, follow them, and you can thrive as Google becomes a publisher.