What do You Think the Biggest Search Trends will Be in 2020?

[effectdigital]

Just interested to hear everyone's thoughts. Personally I think that, even though voice search is already pretty big - it's about to get much, much larger and this may even entirely change the infrastructure of the web. What are your thoughts for changes in search 2020?

[BlueprintMarketing]

I believe featured snippets will be almost impossible to change it seems once that they are cemented in for more than a month or two they are not going to be volatile anymore. Thus we cannot capture them as easily.

Google will continue to give more SERP real estate to Ads / PPC to take it away from organic especially on mobile. Also, no click answers will become more and more prominent.

BERT & User-Focused Optimization

Content will have to get better and better and better because the Internet is growing (and please don't quote me on this) something like 10 times every three months more websites with great content means less space at the top of the SERPs higher-quality more expertise authority and trust E-A-T.

I agree with you that voice search is a huge game-changer. I want to see it adopted a little bit more but I do agree with you.

Honestly, money spent on high-quality content and high-quality work will go up not a very sexy answer but an honest one.

All the best,

Tom

[GastonRiera]

My guess is that 2020 trends (and the big news around search) will be centred in:

1. More Structured data and more complexity under it.
2. Google absorbing niches with their products/Featured snippets.
3. Higher understanding and the need for more complexity in content.

We cannot deny that Google is getting better and better at understanding content and improving their knowledge about users. This means that, as its happening, there will be better results for users at the cost of websites offering better user-focused content and more "digested" data to google (structured data)

A fourth point would be that there will be less and less "organic" real estate in SERPs that websites can compete for. We have enough data proving that every time there are more and more SERPs with 2 or more Featured Snippets (image carousel, PAA and Knowledge graph, just to name a few).

Best of luck to everyone in the incoming year,
Gaston

[effectdigital]

Thanks for your answers Tom I think I agree with most, especially the increasing utility of BERT and the increasing focus on E-A-T. I don't know about you, but I feel that E-A-T was significantly tightened in 2019, and that's set to continue

[effectdigital]

Thanks Gaston I especially agree with your first point, as I believe that infrastructure  (structured data) will be critical to the 'voice-web' which may replace large swathes of 'visual' search. Not all of it, but large chunks of it

[EGOL]

Tom Zickell has it....

Honestly, money spent on high-quality content and high-quality work will go up not a very sexy answer but an honest one.

Twenty years ago, content conquered the SERPs.  It still does today.  I think it still will tomorrow.

If you listen to Google when they say "do this"... "do that".... "make this code".... "make that code".... "mark this up".... "mark that up".... then, next month, Google doesn't use that stuff any more.   My point is that chasing "trends of the year" is very costly.

So from Tom's answer... spend your time on high-quality content and you will not go wrong (unless you write mediocre content and think that it is 10x).

And, from his answer... "high-quality-work"... to me that means... improve your content (text, images, data, media), improve your navigation, improve the appearance of your site, make your title and description elicit clicks.  This is old school stuff that we should focus on always.

"Trends of the Year" are often (usually) decoys away from what is long term successful.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Thank you Effect digital great post!

i agree E-A-T showed a big difference in 2019 & I think it is the start.

All the best,

Tom

[BlueprintMarketing]

Thank you EGOL!

That is kind of you  to say & you improved my answer.

I agree with everything you said my friend!

All the best,

Tom

[effectdigital]

Thanks for your response EGOL, I always really value your comments. I think this makes a lot of sense. How many times have people tried to game the SERPs with minor tactical deployments, only to see Google drop it all within 6 months? Focusing on delivering that which Google's algorithms attempt to seek (high quality content), can only be positive