If you are doing SEO outside of Russia, you know that Google dominates the world in search terms. It is ranked first, Google Images second, YouTube third.

Five main trends can now be identified in its development.

1. Search by zero click

One of the founders of Google, Larry Page, said that the purpose of a search engine is to help people quickly find information and go to the desired site. But now Google is aiming for something different.

So, for example, if you drive in the search for “Joker release date”, we will immediately be shown information without clicking on the links:

In addition, information can be obtained from extended snippets:

Thus, on Google, users no longer need to go to a website to get what they were looking for.

In the summer of 2019, the share of requests without clicks exceeded half of the total search requests. This is very bad.

According to our statistics, over the past three years, our total Internet traffic has dropped by 16%. The share of paid clicks increased from 2% to 4%. Can you imagine a 100% conversion rate in paid links? Over the past three years, Google has doubled their profits.

At the same time, the situation on desktops and mobile devices is different. On desktops, everything looks good: there was once more than 60% of traffic, now 59%. But on mobile, it’s a complete disaster. Organic traffic dropped to 26%, while non-click requests rose to 62%. At the same time, click-throughs on paid links have tripled.

So, for example, in 2015, when entering a query (for example, “jeans”), only one paid link appeared, and everything else was organic. And now almost all of Google’s search results are ads.

Overall, search traffic is falling, and Google’s ad revenue is rising.

What does this mean for the marketer?

Now the reality is that it is better not to count the transitions and not think about traffic, but to fight for the visibility of your site in search. That is, for it to be on the first pages of search results.

2. Legal regulation

In the past, the only one who could successfully control Google by law was the European Union. He had two programs: General Data Protection Regulation and Right to be forgotten. These were not very successful programs, but they worked.

In 2012, the Obama administration launched a major investigation against Google, but the company was able to get out of the situation without loss. However, there is now renewed interest in Google’s control in the US. It addresses three issues.

Is Google prioritizing its own services when searching?

Google can transfer users from one of its services to another. For example, when searching for videos, the search engine suggests YouTube first. As we know, this is a company controlled by Google. It turns out that Google translates search to Google.

If the user searches for any books, he will first of all see the area with quick answers – and the clicks on the links to them lead not to other sites, but to new search pages.

If you enter into Google a query related to finding useful information, the search engine will take the information from the site and list it on the search page with a link to another page in the search. This is how Google does everything so that the person stays in the search engine, and does not go to the site.

According to statistics, about 12% of all clicks from Google go back to its subsidiaries:

Traffic is closed between them. This is wrong: competition is closed to other companies, and the search engine acts as a monopoly player.

And that’s in addition to the fact that half of the clicks from Google are zero and end on the search page.

Is Google’s Quoting Appropriate?

Google displays information from sites, but does not show the source. This is very close to plagiarism.

Is Google using the Android platform and the Chrome browser to become a monopoly?

This year, all 50 US states have initiated investigations against Google. This has never happened before. Both Democrats and Republicans are in favor of the investigation. This could be a major scandal.

There will be elections in the US next year, and many presidential candidates are in favor of investigating large companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook) and stripping them of their monopoly rights.

What does this mean for the marketer?

We do not know what the future will bring, but the worst options are worth considering:

3. Facts and search ranking

Now Google pays great attention not only to the popularity of the site, but also to its credibility. Sites with the most accurate information go to the top.

This is very important, especially in the medical field. So, for example, in the past, when there was a fairly popular campaign against vaccination, sites that talked about the dangers of vaccines were at the top. This led to numerous vaccine denials and diseases. For many years Google has worked on algorithms that can find scientific truth in facts, and it has succeeded.

Let’s look at an example. Dr. Mercola is a renowned representative of alternative medicine. Previously, his site could be found with millions of searches. Now – only by branded (or follow the direct link). Site visibility dropped to almost zero.

Lost traffic and other sites dedicated to alternative medicine. The information on them conflicted with scientific representation, and Google limited their visibility.

At the same time, the Google “Consensus” algorithm determines scientificness works like this: if the same fact is written on several sites, then it is considered reliable.

What does this mean for the marketer?

Sites with information that does not correspond to the scientific understanding of this issue are lowered in the search. This primarily concerns alternative medicine.

4. Paid Links 2.0

If you’ve been in SEO for a long time, remember that in 2012 Google released the Penguin algorithm, which solved the problem with paid links. Regardless, I took a vote on Twitter; More than 1000 SEO professionals participated in it and most believe that paid links still work.

These are no longer the links they were in 2012. One link can cost $ 80-90, but it is of high quality and gives a good effect.

Here’s a chart from one of my competitors. For many years he has been buying links and is doing well. It thrives:

However, if Google catches you using third-party links, it will impose penalties.

The search engine has a tool for webmasters Google Disavow Tool: voluntary rejection of third-party links. In this case, you protect yourself from liability for placing paid links on the site.

I use it a lot – the links work and there are no penalties. The results are as follows:

What does this mean for the marketer?

We can still use paid links, but this is dangerous. If some other algorithm similar to Penguin appears, then the site may fly out of search.

5. From SEO to SERP

Traditionally, SEO has targeted keywords. They hammered in the word, looked at the frequency of use.

But the site that ranks third for this keyword is not even close to the frequency of the request itself. That is, the question is not in the number of people who are looking for this word, but in the transitions.

If you are not getting clicks, then you can try to take up as much space as possible with your snippet. All that can be seen on the screen is one query, and it has almost 600 words. This is practically a whole site.

If you are familiar with the answer-question diagram, you can use this tool. This will increase your visibility, although it won’t add more traffic to your site.

What does this mean for the marketer?

You have to choose what to target: conversions or visibility.

SEO tactics and tools

Let’s take a look at five useful tools.

Speed ​​up website loading

Site speed is very important for both users and search engines. To speed it up, you can use the Edgemesh.com tool. The first 100,000 are free – then for a small fee.

Image classification

On large sites with many images, you can use the Google Vision API tool.

With its help, you can automatically classify images into categories, assign tags to them. The service is also able to recognize text in pictures.

Relinking

For communication between site pages, linking, you can use the inlinks.net service. It automatically parses the site, searches for similar pages (for example, apple trees are mentioned on one page, apples are mentioned on the other) and relinks if it is not already there.

The service also helps to automatically generate tags.

Increase site coverage

The fifth tool helps you increase your reach. Powered by WordPress only.

When a site owner posts something on WordPress, the plugin scans the material for link content and automatically collects the contacts of the people whose sites are linked to. Then just click on the button, and the program will automatically generate a list of people to whom you can contact with a request for a reciprocal link.

The report was read by Cyrus Shepard, founder of Zyppy.