Want to know what Google’s universal search results will look like in a few years time? Listen to Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products and User Experience, talking about an experiment the Google UI team performed some time back:
When you started seeing some diagrams, some video, some news, some charts, you might actually have a page that looks and feels more like an interactive encyclopedia.
I think the idea of your search results ultimately having the richness of an interactive encyclopaedia would be very appealing for many users (and a living nightmare for traditional SEO’s).
I won’t parrot the whole thing but I found Mayer’s interview with Gordon Hotchkiss really interesting and I’d recommend reading it. You won’t be surprised to know I was particularly interested in her take on the increasing integration of rich media. This particularly resonated:
The other thing we’re seeing is different mediums, audio, video. They used to not work. If you remember getting back a year ago, everytime you clicked on an audio file or a movie file, it would be, like, ‘thunk’? It needs a plug in, or “thunk”, it doesn’t work. Now we’re coming into some standardized formats and players that are either browser or technology independent enough, or are integrated enough that they are actually going to work.
I don’t think we’re quite there yet with standardisation and but we’re certainly moving away from the universal thunk.
That’s why travel companies should be rolling their sleeves up right now and gaining experience in creating rich content, not just to gain attention in the organic search results but also as part of their paid search marketing. Because, as Mayer predicts:
as the page becomes richer, the ads also need to become richer, just so that they look alive and match the page.
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