From ‘Search’ to The ‘Journey of Discovery’.

While not considered a proper ranking factor for SEO, having amazing social signals certainly helps bolster those that are. Adding to ‘trust’ and ‘expertise’, and with the current trend of User Generated Content (UGC) as a form of brand exposure, social signals are an aspect of SEO to keep an eye on as we leave 2023 behind and venture into the new year.

In this edition, we take a hard look at the current state of social media, where each seems to be evolving going forward, how search engines are attempting to enter the fray, plus a quick touch upon the announcement of Google Gemini.

For Example…

Google may have tried their hand at wedging into the social media arena in the past with Google+, but that doesn’t mean that they had abandoned that scope of thought forever. Two current developments for the search giant include Google Discover and the ability to ‘follow’ a query, transforming the search landscape into one more aligned with a journey.

Google Discover - The Lowdown

Google Discover began as a mobile feature feed that appeared under the typical search box. For some users, this ‘feed’ is starting to appear on desktop, replacing the simplistic empty screen that's usually only adorned by a search box and a few optional favourite page links.

By Google’s own definition: “Discover is an updated Google feed experience that keeps you inspired and informed about the interests and hobbies you care about most.” Here’s how the feature may appear on mobile:

Essentially, Google is attempting to provide users with content before they even begin their search - basing this on the activity the user has already conducted on their device. The idea is to provide personal, relevant, people-first content to users akin to how a social media platform delivers content on its own feed - operating as a 'content-journey' option before the search box gets hit with its usual important questions…

From an SEO perspective, websites and creators will want to appear on the feed for their niche, especially if the user resonates in their business or interest arena. This is super important when it comes to SEO, with many of the sensible processes carrying over into what will help you appear and be discovered:

• Writing excellent content, with strong headlines.
• Demonstrating experience, expertise, authority, and providing trust signals. (EEAT).
• Keeping your content ‘timely’.
• Investing in visual content support - image and video.
• Providing quality assurance to your work.

This is insightful for those providing the content, but how can the user stay engaged with what interests them on this feed? The same way they do on their social media platforms…

To Follow, Or Not To Follow?

With a simple button placed into the search results, users of Google, (and especially of the app), can choose to ‘follow’ specific areas of interest.

By choosing to follow a particular topic of trend, the feed and search results that get presented to you become curated to your tastes. You will basically be ‘subscribing’ to topics within your Google profile. You may also get notifications in the Google app, or a ‘new for you’ section appearing on the SERP. Finally, you may start to see ‘personalised ranking’, based on your search history and what you follow - which will differ from person to person.

If Google and Bing! are beginning to adopt a ‘feed’ type presentation on their homepage and search apps - how does this compare to the social media giants who have been doing this for many, many years? After all, social media has itself evolved over the last decade and a half to stay up to date with user engagement, and probably wouldn't want to lose any ground from what the search engines are doing - and their potentially creeping competitors…

The State of Current Social Media.

Google’s foray into the social media landscape comes at what could be viewed as a turbulent time for many other platforms. Or is it?

LinkedIn continues to be an informative, career-based social network of expertise and authority - with the slight movement into more conversational topics, news, and articles being generated and shared. Twitter has reformed as ‘X’ in an attempt to revitalise itself; a move that has created a great divide in its user base. Finally, Meta has been aware of the longevity of each of their platforms, adapting and evolving over time to cater towards trends in user activity and how businesses can get exposure.

Whether or not these major platforms have got ‘better’ or ‘worse’ over time is a matter of perspective, and may come down to what each user gains from the experience. Specifically, social media caters to three main goals. Connectivity, promotion, and the sharing of content. Most of these platforms are free, (or have an upgrade option), and therefore the presence of advertising, or the increase in advertising, was always going to be inevitable. One has to ask: compared to 15 years ago, has ‘connectivity’ become less important over time?

Let’s take Facebook as a prime example of how this has evolved. Here’s a blast from the past: a random person’s Facebook page from the late 2000s:

Posting on people’s walls. Sharing photos and experiences. Untagging yourself from photos and experiences before your ‘work friend’ sees them. Poking! What a time to be social online.

But this is no longer the platform that most of us still scroll through - and we definitely do scroll through it. Facebook’s current user number is at over 3 billion - yet its purpose and use has most certainly evolved. While the sister platform, Instagram, caters more for the aspect of connectivity, we got curious and did an experiment…

Using a personal account on a mobile device, we counted the first 100 posts that appeared on the feed and categorised them into what ‘type’ of post they fell under. We were curious to see how many fell under the umbrella of ‘connectivity’ - specifically, friends posting statuses or pictures of their own life.

Have a guess beforehand how many you believe there might be. Bear in mind that this is a rough observation of the incredibly popular platform, and the results may also be subject to the settings on the account:

• People posts - status updates and photos: 12
• People posts - but they are sharing articles: 14
• Ads/sponsored content: 31
• Suggested for you: 23 - This seems to be a new feature. Articles or pages the account currently has no connection with. Some of these were vaguely-disguised as ‘sponsored content’.
• Pages: 15 - These are from pages that the personal account had voluntarily signed up to in the past. It is worth noting that many of these posts had repeats.
• Events: 3 - This is rather low considering events are a form of promotion, but this was the number obtained in this experiment.
• Reels: 1 - this is surprising given how frequently these used to appear when embracing the trend of TikTok-style videos.
• Friend suggestions: 1

This may seem like a hyper-critical evaluation of Facebook, but despite the array of results, the user statistics of Facebook's popularity show that we are still very engaged. In fact, here are some staggering numbers of the state of global social media as of May 2023:

• 4.9 billion people use social media across the world.
• The average person spends about 145 minutes on social media every day.
• In the US, the average person has 7.1 social media accounts.

Statistics like these make it hard to be able to say that 'the days of social media use are due to come to an end' - but does that mean it’s all due to evolve?

Gemini

And then we have this announcement from Google to add to the mix of ‘evolution’. Google’s massive answer to ChatGPT:

Taking the route of AI to guide a user’s search journey, (as opposed to their ‘search query’), Google’s recently announced AI system is set to raise the AI integration process to the next level. There is not a lot to go on just yet, but here are the highlights, (and self-evaluations), of what has been announced:

• Google claims that Gemini has advanced capabilities in reasoning, and is designed to be more ‘careful’ when approaching difficult questions.
• Gemini is multimodal, as to be expected - meaning that it can understand many forms of input including text, imagery, code, and audio.
• There will be three versions. Ultra - for complex tasks. Pro - for a wider range of tasks. Nano - for use on devices.

It’s all another step in the AI race. Time will tell if the innovations and user interactions match the hype.

Your Thoughts?

So what do you think about the state of search and social media as we round up the end of the year? Is Google sweeping in on an opportunity, embracing an already established trend, or aiming for something new entirely? What does this mean for SEO? Leave a comment, engage, and chat on this: the current social media platform you are on!