Happy New Years!
With every new year comes new challenges, problems, opportunities and ultimately, changes. For many of you, your new year’s resolution is based upon transforming your old 2011-self into the new and improved person that you know that you can be in 2012. Your resolution may be as simple as toning down the soda consumption, getting in the gym more often, or being more proactive with work, family, etc.
Like people, businesses around the globe have resolutions for every new year. And like people again, these resolutions vary from business to business. For the small proprietor down the street, a resolution as simple as offering higher quality customer service would suffice. For the medium-sized business, searching for and entering new markets during 2012 would be profound. Now, for the big business. There are those enormous conglomerations that view increases in their bottom line as the ultimate source of success. There are also those big businesses out there that understand their size is both an advantage (widespread, more employees, more $$$, more opportunities) and a disadvantage (spread too thin in all categories).
In this case, Google’s resolution is to make online search more efficient. By efficient I mean straight to the point and more accurate. According to an article in the Harvard Business Review Blog, Google is going to alter the way online marketing is approached in 2012.
- Firstly, Google is going to answer your search results, literally. This means that Google hopes to have its searchers avoid clicking through to websites after they enter a question in the search box complete with a “?” at the end of the entry.
- Secondly, Google will continue to invade new industries and markets. The world is not enough! With new partnerships, expect new and innovative changes to your search results.
- Thirdly, Google will expand its restrictions on data. For example, if you are logged into your google account, you can visit any website via keyword and the webmaster will not know what keyword you entered. Expect these restrictions to improve as Google begins to take more and more custody over this kind of information.
Also, if you view the page source of this blog post you will see that I have added tags to clarify what exactly I am talking about. Although minimal, this will help Google sift through and define information more accurately.
To learn more, click here.
