Since the beginning of the search engine, SEO has been an essential, yet quite often misunderstood industry. For most people, these three letters bring massive frustration; but for others, SEO has rescued their business. To top it off, having a distinct search strategy often separates those who succeed on their business ventures, from those who don’t.
So as we wrap up the year, let’s have a look at how this industry has grown and changed over time, shall we?
The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Google, Amazon, IBM, and Apple are very proactive in developing and utilizing an Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI). This specific AI can be used to automate repetitive tasks, such as: looking up shipping dates, product details, order histories and performing other client requests.
The consumer is continuously becoming more comfortable with this certain type of technology and has grown to trust its results. Why you ask? Well, Google handles more than 3.5 billion searches per day, in which 16% to 20% of those are unique queries that have never been searched by anyone before. To manage this type of demand, Google created a machine learning in order to help deliver better and reliable results.
An ever-growing industry
SEO’s reputation has grown massively over the past few years, due to the awesome work of the real pros out there. Presently, the industry is worth more than $65 billion, and this is because large and small companies are seeing just how important it is to have a good search strategy in their line of business.
As search engines continue to evolve over time, SEO is not just another added service brought to you by some freelance web designers. With the right amount of data, tools, knowledge, skills and experience, SEO has become a leading industry all on its own.
Mobile-friendly algorithm
A year after “Mobilegeddon”, a certain event marked by the launch of Google’s mobile-friendly ranking algorithm, the giant company announced that it would soon be augmenting its effects, so as to further provide mobile-friendly sites on mobile search. That particular boost rolled out last May 12, 2016, though the outcome was not nearly as momentous as when the mobile-friendly ranking algorithm initially started.
The Divided index
As mobile search continues to be accountable for a most global share of the search queries, Google is progressively taking steps to becoming a mobile-first company. Just last November, Google declared that it was experimenting with using a mobile-first index, which basically means that the mobile version of a website would be considered the “default” option for ranking purposes instead of the usual desktop version.
