Search Engine Changes Coming In 2017

2016 was an interesting year in terms of changes rolled out and the direction search engine marketing took.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) were launched in February, the take up by some has paid dividends, although many haven’t even reacted yet, and some aren’t suitable, but for those who are embracing it the cached Google hosted pages can load up to 30 times faster than normal pages, and in a mobile world every split second counts.

Probably the biggest change that jolted some people awake was the “Mobile First” indexing. Unleashed in the final quarter, it confirmed Google’s commitment to a mobile audience; mobile now drives more volume that desktop or tablets.

AMP Development and Widespread Uptake.
In 2017 we expect to see a further adoption but more importantly; development in the AMP space. Advertising formats on AMP pages will expand as 80% of publishers are seeing higher viewability rates, 90% are driving greater engagement with higher CTR’s and the majority are seeing higher eCPMs so it’s definitely a format that is adding value. Companies like Yieldmo.com are innovating in this space, they have worked closely with the AMP team to develop non-intrusive ads to drive genuine revenue, rather than accidental clicks, undesirable content experiences and poor technical performance of the page being viewed.

If you are running WordPress, you can get your site AMP enabled by downloading the WordPress AMP Plugin here, once installed it will generate a new AMP version of each new post.

Further Uptake Of Voice In Search.
Siri started ball rolling, With the further release of Google Allo, Amazon Echo, Dot and Google Home, people are going to get much more used to just issuing random verbal demands to their technology, the perceived stigma or geek factor of just speaking to virtual assistants when around other people will fade quickly. Even people who don’t think they’ll use it will eventually be won over, or in time featured up to using it via their hardware, for example our MD received an Amazon Echo for Christmas and it has rapidly been incorporated into daily use, despite researching about it when launched and previously discounting it as not something he can see himself using.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated mid 2016 that 20% of the USA search volume on Android was carried out via voice search, The number one rule of Google is give people what they want so they come back and search again, so you can expect to see voice technology advance and become more accessible.