Is Search (SEO) Changing? I believe it is and so here are my SEO predictions for 5 years from now.

Over Christmas and the new year I used the internet to learn a lot of new things, I read all about Bitcoin and the move towards a virtual currency. This lead me to find a great way to invest in bitcoin for myself.

I read all about the war in Syria and I learnt a lot about the war from Syria’s side as well as the Americans side.

I kept up to date with my mates all around the world and indeed found some great advice about where to take my wife for our anniversary dinner and which restaurants we should visit when we go to San Sebastián in the Basque region of Spain later this year.

How did I find all this brilliant info?

NOT on Google.

How can that be ?

It’s because Google is late on everything.

The latency on Google information relative to searches on Twitter (or hosts to the Twitter Firehose), Instagram, Tumbler, Pinterest, Facebook (although declining because they changed the search of public pages to hash tags), is long and important.  

Just a few short pre twitter, pre app years ago we could depend on the fact that if the information was important to even a small segment of the population someone would put it on a website and it would be indexed by Google and made available quickly if not in near real-time.

That is no longer the case.

When was the last time any of us updated a real website with current information ?

We say what we want to say on our social networks or on twitter. I know the amount of posts I make on this blog has dropped considerably because its far easier to present my thoughts elsewhere.

If Google isn’t indexing what is said on twitter/facebook/pinterest/tumbler/instagram/SnapChat /all the topic & affinity  apps (your favourite team/band/etc)  and elsewhere, aren’t they missing most of the information that is being communicated in the world?

If  I want to know if anything note worthy happened in the world, the last place i would search is Google. I would search twitter first.  If i want to know if anything interesting happened at an event, the last place I would search is Google. I would search Instagram.   The list goes on.

Thats not to say I don’t use Google. I use Google to keep up with with my interest in what is happening with online shopping.  If I want information about a company and their products, I will use Google. If i want to look up product information , I will use Google and the other sources as well to get the most relevant information. Google is still an important part of our lives.

Listen, I’m not saying that Google is going anywhere soon.

It is and will be dominant for at least the next few years.  What I am saying is that I place a significant value on recency for many of my business and personal related searches.  Google does a very poor job of indexing and presenting real-time , near-time or even recent information. Which in turn begs the question of whether this lack of recency will impact our ability to trust Google or other search engine results ? Or will we just learn where to use Google and where not to use it ?

My SEO prediction is that Google will need to acquire a news related service very quickly if it is to survive and thrive in years to come.

As more and more people move online they will start to get their news and updates from a varied source of services and in doing so will spawn new and exciting ways to monetize those platforms.

The game is changing, just like Google you can change too or lose market share.

Neil