Google I/O, their annual developer conference, was held on May 10 in Mountain View, California. This is the time for Google to highlight new product developments and where the future of their products is headed. There can be an overwhelming amount of data from this conference, and it can be difficult to understand how Google’s announcements impact your brand. That is what the Google Whisperer is here for. I’m breaking down everything they said and how it affects your digital strategy.
One of the bigger announcements from Google was the “Search Generative Experience” or how AI is being integrated into search results. When users do a certain type of search, Google will leverage their AI, Bard, and generate a full response to the search. As you can see in the example below, Bard can produce a multi-paragraph response to the question that pushes the search results down.
After looking at the example, you may be thinking “well, my website doesn’t matter now that AI is here”. At first glance it may look that way, but when diving into what is happening there, a case can be made for a well-structured website that Google can crawl. Let’s get into that.
Google taking information from your website and incorporating it into search results is not a new subject. Google has been doing that for years. Remember when someone had to visit your website to find your hours and phone number? Now you can get that information without ever leaving Google.
The thing is, Google must get that information from somewhere, and that’s where your website comes into play. As you see from the search generative experience, Google is putting in links to the website(s) Bard sourced to write the answer. The answer must be sourced, and Google is going to use the best content it can find. Your digital strategy needs to include a content and SEO strategy. This isn’t a strategy using ChatGPT to write your content but involves having an SEO team that can research topics in your vertical and write the content Google is looking for.
Google’s advancement of the search generative experience means you need a website that speaks Google’s technical language. Google uses structured data to understand the content on a website and determine if it matches the user’s search. For example, a website with product schema markup will call out MSRP, sales price, product name, and other attributes. Google even tells you the type of structured data they recommend websites use. For over 10 years, they have said JSON-LD is the recommended format. JSON-LD isn’t visible to the users but is easy for the Google crawlers to find and understand. JSON-LD can also be read from JavaScript files, making implementation easier than other languages. Google is only going to keep relying on this type of schema as it expands what Bard answers, which means you need a technical website strategy today.
If all this seems overwhelming and you need guidance, the Ansira team is here to help you understand and guide your technical search strategy.
