Google- The power of the Artificial Intelligence or why you should not keep your eggs in one basket

I am an avid reader and I always like to inform myself about latest news on subjects that am interested about. That is why I want to bring your attention to something I find very alluring without obliging you to take it as an advice.

We are all fighting to bring traffic to our websites by using different sources. Among the most commonly used is the organic search traffic. As you already know this is the traffic that came to your website via people who found you by typing keywords in the search engines.

Another thing that you probably know is that Google is the most popular search engine with 1 600 000 000 unique monthly visitors. (as per EbizMBA Rank, 1 November 2016).

If you use the SEO rules described at https://support.google.com/webmasters/ and of course, all the great training at WA, then your online project would rank very well in search results.

Here arises the question: “is it a good practice to rely mainly on search engines and more specifically on Google for bringing traffic to your website”? The answer for me is negative and I will tell you why.

Imagine that your traffic source graph in Google Analytics shows that 90% of your traffic comes from Google. That means that you did pretty well in the SEO class and you have optimized your website in an impressive way.

Now imagine that you make some optimization changes, which lead to Google ranking drop, or you disappear from the search results. Then you will have to rely on the remaining 10% traffic that you have from other sources. That means one thing- you lose visitors, therefore your business is in danger.

The Google search algorithm changes up to 400 times per year or averagely 1.1 times per day. Sometimes the changes are not big and your website is not affected or the effect is visible in a few months.

Sometimes though, the changes are so big that you can quickly lose Google positions without even being responsible for that.

When searching based on some words or expressions Google doesn’t show the content in the usual way like we all have used to see it. For instance, some places like hotels, sights or restaurants are directly appearing above the search results with a map of the place from Google Maps, description of the place and comments from Google Places.

If in the past the visitor used to enter in a specific website to see the address he is looking for or to see some comments on the topic, now he can do this on the page with the results from Google. He is no longer interested to visit the specific website in order to learn the information he is searching for- he can find it in the Google network. In that way the visitor may skip your site and stay in the Google Network.

Google processes more and more statistical data with every day. For example during a soccer world cup, if you search something on the subject ,you will find important information in a small square above all search results- exact time and place of the game, result score (if the match has finished), info about the specific game etc.

All websites containing similar information are losing visitors and the businesses of their webmasters are suffocating.

If you type “1 $ in eur” in Google the result is the following:

The information is immediately displayed right in front of you without the necessity to open any websites. What happens with the currency converting websites? You got it- they are losing visitors.

It is expected that Google’s IQ will increase so dramatically that the search engine will be able to answer concrete questions and to visualize more and more data directly above its search results.

That would lead to serious loss of traffic for many websites and those that have 90% of their visitors coming from Google (search engines) will suffer the most.

Recently the Google Headquarters have announced their plans to ameliorate the accessibility for their users by making it possible to book reservations directly from the search results.

For instance if you type “Two Suns Hotel in Miami” Google will be rational enough to show you a map of the hotel, its opening hours, photos as well as a button to chose a date and book your reservation, without the necessity to open a single website. All that information will be visible above the search results.

Of course this is as per now experimental, but Google aims to convert the traffic in reservations in the most efficient manner possible without losing the time of their users.

In other words, the biggest search engine in the world intends to displace the mediators in the buying/selling process in the tourist services branch by becoming a mediator itself.

For the end user, it doesn’t matter from where he makes the reservation if it is price worthy, easy and fast.

Here are the lessons that need to be learned, based on my modest opinion:

-learn to adapt

-always inform yourself about the latest SEO news

- don’t put your eggs in one basket-diversify your source of traffic (learn to use e-mail marketing, social media, virus marketing and other marketing campaigns)

i repeat that I've used various online and offline sources to gather that information and this is not a marketing advice. This post has informative purpose only and reflects my personal opinion on the matter.

I hope you enjoyed reading.

Asen