2020 is expected to be a rather difficult year for Google, with all eyes on the giant’s next move: will it choose verticalization over Google Maps or try to balance between the two? Some voices claim the most popular search engine on the planet will turn from everybody’s favorite search engine to everybody’s competitor. How could this be? It’s a matter of monopoly and trends, and the zero-click search trend seems to be gaining more and more ground lately. We are curious to see what the upcoming months will bring. For now, it is safe to say that if you’ve ever been on a site like Kayak or USNews, you probably have a pretty clear idea of what we are talking about.
Google Trends That Cannot Be Ignored
A great number of verticals such as celebrity, gaming, weather or restaurant recommendations have all been impacted by things like zero-click transactions, knowledge cards or featured answers, to name just a few. Google Shopping or Google Travel are both trends that are connected at a strategical as well as technological level. Google is slowly pushing all sources of information that can be mined into the margins, replacing them with its own content. This also includes online commercial transactions.
The impact on local searches will be inevitable and the next few lines will reveal a few of them.
Google Has Studied Users’ Behavior Online
The powerful search engine has taken its time assessing the way people complete their searches in all verticals and has slightly altered the local search experience over the years. Its main goal? To successfully create search experiences that are even more verticalized.
One of the major reasons for this is because Google aims to become the best local search engine on the planet, with verticalization being the next logical “destination”. Some marketers expect to see the biggest niche websites be completely removed from people’s searches so they can stop catering to the needs of a large part of the population, with Google turning into the main “middleman” between businesses and customers.
How Will The Trends Affect A Service-Oriented Business?
While the top search engine has been adding fresh Local Service Ads options like the Google Guaranteed moneyback feature or the Google Screened license verification service, it feels like it’s not enough. Lots of verticals are still not allowed to purchase Local Service Ads and the list includes locksmiths, financial planners, photographers and more. Plus, the same service is not made available in some parts of the country, despite the growing popularity.
At the same time, consumers would rate the Local Service Ads experience less successful compared to Shopping or Travel experiences. The incentive to click on a sponsored search result is less powerful. However, things are likely to change as Google might just become the best recommendation service out there, offering various levels of service ranging from a basic and free one to a business-oriented one in exchange for a fee.
Lots of service-oriented businesses such as marketing companies or casinos are currently either “forced” to pay for ads or struggle to rank along with land businesses in Google maps. Most of them choose to list spam in a desperate attempt to improve their ranking. Gambling sites like the ones you can find on the Australia Casino site need to compete against brick-and-mortar casinos. Luckily for these businesses, the 24/7 free access to these venues, excellent welcome packages offering free spins or free casino money are arguments enough for lots of players to opt for the virtual alternative.
Shopping and The Google Trends
Without a doubt, retail shopping has witnessed a great number of small changes over the years, with Google more prone to show searchers the local availability of the products they are interested in, even though they might not have been searching for local results in particular and on purpose. For example, searching for a particular pair of earrings on Google will automatically result in the display of local shops near you that are selling the respective earrings as well as photos of the earrings whether by themselves or accompanied by other jewellery. Photography content is a new trend we can expect to see more of this year, on top of the altered listing display that can match the search queries. With the search engine being able to identify some products that are present in a photo that also has other products in it, it is interesting to see how Google will reshape the way we do our shopping online in the upcoming months.