The Local Search Association held its annual conference last month, where search and marketing experts in the local space provided fascinating insights into trends and challenges that the advertising, marketing and search industry faces today.
Here are 10 of the top insights shared at LSA16.
1. Search disruption is coming
Online search has essentially followed the directory listing model, whether it be search results from Google, restaurant reviews on Yelp or hotels on TripAdvisor. Yet a number of speakers at LSA16 shared innovations that deviate from this traditional model that owes its genesis to print directories.
Virtual assistants and artificial intelligence have been talked about for a number of years since their launch in 2011. Google voice search was launched in mid-2011, and Siri was launched towards the end of 2011. However, they’ve largely been limited to setting calendar events, making witty responses to dumb questions and inspiring dreams about what the future could hold. Search performed on virtual assistants was negligible. Until 2015.
In 2015, voice search soared to 10 percent of all search volume globally. According to Timothy Tuttle of MindMeld, that’s a jump from a statistical zero to 50 billion searches a month that are now being performed by voice search. The numbers are corroborated by an eMarketer report that cites even higher usage.
Voice search is resulting in longer natural language queries on Cortana, according to Microsoft. And these queries reveal greater intent by the user that give better search results leading to declining importance of keywords. TalkLocal explained that queries for “help fixing a leak in my pool plumbing” or “my water heater burst and it’s coming through the ceiling” are superior to a keyword search for plumber.
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