Internet Marketing for 2020
As we approach the end of the year, youll be starting to see a bunch of "SEO for 2015" articles. Well Im going to do you one betterIm writing one to help you rank better not just a few months from now (come on anyone can do THAT, right?) but five YEARS from now. Admittedly Im probably not going to be able to make some offhand references to some of my favorite shows and pop-culture, but I will try to keep this article meaningful. While I listed 2020 in the title, this is more meant to mean "the future past the current state of algorithms" and not necessarily 2020 (though it will be interesting to look back then and see how close or far off I was in when things will happen).
What were really going to be looking at here is what technologies Google is advancing on and what that will mean for SEO and Internet marketers. Before I begin, Im going to give a big thanks to Bill Slawski (and not my first). On his blog SEO by the Sea, Bill does an excellent job of Google patent analysis and helps put them in terms and applications we can all make sense of. I say this now as hes a solid reason Ive been able to stay ahead of many technologies.
Alright, now lets get to it
A picture. For those of you in my age group, youll remember watching The Jetsonsand thinking about how cool that world would be. Well, all that coolness comes with a cost and heres the rub, we dont want to pay for it. We want to continue adding cooler technology to our lives but we dont want the price tag that goes with it, but it has to be paid for. And so companies will develop it and give it to us for virtually nothing but a tiny little bit of our privacy. And then a bit more.
So, what this means is that we are on the road to an enormously convenient future with a lot of cool gadgets and nick-knacks and well give up a ton of our privacy and personal information in exchange for that. At the lowest level, to illustrate the point, Id simply need to ask you when the last time you read a license agreement for software or the permission for an app you were installing. OK, so lets assume well give up our information and privacy to corporations pretty freely for neat things that are shiny, what does that have to do with SEO in 2020? Now that we know what well give up, lets look at whats in the works to help separate you from your information but give you a big payoff in convenience
The biggest change coming has to do with the "always on" or, as I like to think, "always trackable" status of our lives and it's not slowing down. Our desire for convenience and to own "Rosie the robot" gives companies like Google huge leverage and I'm not going to pretend I'm not easily seduced by it.
If we look to the acquisition of a myriad of robotics companies and nest, we can see the writing on the wall. Military applications aside, it is clear that they are looking for further integration into your home. It may not be directly - I have a hunch they'll simply be providing a free or very low cost infrastructure to manufacturers of devices similar to what they did with Android, giving them a reach into areas of your life they otherwise couldn't touch. Imagine a world where they know when you're out of bread, what climate you prefer, whether your house is dirty or not, and how often you eat out. Now imagine marketing into that world.
To really get a grasp on this point one needs simply to look to their recently granted patent, "System and method for enhancing user search results by determining a television program currently being displayed in proximity to an electronic device." What we're seeing here (Cliff Notes) is Google using your device to listen in and pay attention to your television and use that to augment search results. Sorry guys, your guilty pleasure watching of reality TV is no longer secret, but can be used to adjust your search results. Now, carry that one step further - why not listen in to determine if there's yelling in the house or if you've just been intimate and use that information? Now again, imagine marketing into that world.
And it gets more interesting.
All right, I warned you that I might make a few references to pop culture but being the person that I am, my references are pretty nerdy so you'll have to bare with me.
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Internet Marketing for 2020