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The State of SearchDanny Sullivan
Founding Editor, Search Engine Land
Let’s play a game:“Who’s number one?”
Being “Number 1” & “10 blue links” is dead
SEO is dead
Congrats, SEM!
Thank You!
SEO is NOT dead
Changing landscapemeans
changing opportunities
What’s changing?....
Past: T-E-X-A-SToday: Place connected to people, things & facts
The age of
entities &
entity search
Entity search =more direct answers
Will direct
answers
kill SEO?Was 28% a year ago, now 36%
Source: MozCast SERP Features Graph
Weird answer
s
Wronganswer
s
Photo of Ygritte from HBO
Watch Game Of Thrones!
YOU KNOW
NOTHING,
GOOGLE!
Reasons to
relax
• Google can’t turn everything intodirect answers
• Direct answers still minority of searches• Many searches complex or multi-session• Most publishers aren’t reporting major
traffic drops• Some publishers actually want to be
answers because links drive traffic• Stay Tuned: Concerns remain & people
are watching to see if Google keeps search engine “balancing act”
Google Posts & rise of distributed / hosted
content
Specialsection
forselect
companies
andgroups
Contenthosted
onGoogleitself
Worry?Maybe
not,givenhasn’tbeen
success
Rise of AMP & more hosted concerns
AMPis
partof
mainsearchresults
AMP pages
effectively
hostedby
BTW AMP >
app links
Maybe hosted & distributed
is the new future…
And OK, if you can achieve the same goals…
Or not. Experiment.
Watch carefully.
The end of filters?
After two-year wait,
Penguin goes real-time
Panda goes “slow-
time” but continuou
s all the same
Hummingbird was new “engine” designed to better process signals, filters & things to come
Enter machine learning & RankBrain
There’s no “SEO for RankBrain”
RankBrain
uses machine learning
to largely refineresuls
Match uncommon queries
to common
ones where has
more confidenc
e in results
The “mobile-first” world is now
But “mobile-friendly”
is outdate
d thinking
Mobile-first not
mobile-friendly:
If it’s not in mobile,
it might not be in Google
Mobileactionitems
Mobile-first, not mobile-friendly, version of siteClick-to-callApp for repeat visitors?Maybe progressive web app, watch & see
Bots, digital assistants and hands-free search
Predictive search
has grown
Google Assistantis (supposedly)
“assistive search”
But future of
assistive search & bots is less
clear, has long
way to go
Look ma: no hands!
Google Home: Google comes
to life as a
companion…
What about
credit? There’s some…
But we deserv
e better metric
s
I’ll leave you with…
What was true 20 years ago
remains true now…
Search is always changing
What doesn’t change is people will always
search
Search marketers figure out
how people search and increase visibility
from search venues
Visibility in print yellow pages:
search marketing!
Visibility with 25 words in Yahoo:
search marketing!
Visibility with web listings in Google:
search marketing!
Visibility with whatever is to come:
search marketing!
The names change.The specifics change.
The successful curiosity skills remain the same!
And the curious, the questioning, the always-
exploring search marketer
sees change as opportunity
Thank You
Google's Knowledge Graph Google Direct Answers / Featured S
nippets How to get Featured Snippets for yo
ur site Google Posts How Trump & Clinton have failed to
use free space in Google Google: Accelerated Mobile Pages /
AMP Google: AMP will override app deep
links for the foreseeable future Google Firebase App Indexing Google updates Penguin, says it no
w runs in real time within core search algorithm
Google Penguin Update
Google Panda is now part of Google’s core ranking signals
SMX Advanced keynote: Google’s Gary Illyes talks RankBrain, Penguin update
Google Panda Update Google Hummingbird Google: RankBrain Mobilegeddon FAQ: All about the Google mobile-fir
st index Google and Progressive Web Apps:
the mobile experience and SEO Google Assistant For answering questions, Google Ho
me bests Amazon Echo & Alexa How Google Home turns voice answ
ers into clickable links 10 big changes with search engines
over my 20 years of covering them
some images from Shutterstock, used under license
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