Avatar Posted by Cameron Francis on in News Uncategorized

Google recently announced that Glass will be available to the general public in the latter part of 2014.  The public launch of Glass will be an exciting event, but it will present search marketers with new challenges. Since the way Glass deals with search, as opposed to traditional mobile or desktop devices, is quite different, search optimisation on Glass will necessitate new tactics and strategies.

Google-Glass

What makes search differ so much on Glass?  What can search marketers do to get prepared for Glass?  Read on to find out.

No More Blue Links

A search performed on Glass will not return a page full of 10 links, it will use info cards instead. Only one card will be viewable at any one time. To see the next card, a user will have to use their hands to swipe forward. This is far more inconvenient than using a mouse to scroll. Consequently, if your site is displayed on the fourth or fifth card, most glass users won’t see it.

If most of the traffic is driven by keywords that are not in the first three positions, you may experience a significant decrease in traffic when more searches are performed on Glass or similar devices.

To achieve better results on Glass you will need to focus your paid search and SEO resources on getting the top position for searches that are less popular, even if you end up losing rankings for searches that have more traffic where you are not in the top 3 in search results. You will have to closely monitor trends in Glass adoption in order to properly time your strategy.

Image Search

Imagine your future shopping experience using Glass.  Rather than having many isles with shelves full of products, the store will only need several display products. By using Glass all you need to do is view display products and see all the pertinent information, like nutrition facts, price, stock levels, and more.

To choose the product you would only need to wink to add it to your shopping cart. When you arrive at the register, all of the products in your virtual shopping cart are ready for you. View the price total, and then wink to finish the transaction with Google Wallet. You won’t need an actual cart loaded with items, no problems with injuring yourself picking up heavy bottles.

Could this be a future shopping scenario? Perhaps, but it is surely in the future of online search, since each time you view a product while using Glass, you are searching the web automatically for information that is related.  Price comparisons, reviews, coupons, are all content that has to be created, optimised, indexed and finally ranked if consumers are to see it when contemplating a purchase of your product.

If you are marketing products that are sold at retail, do you have a content strategy that includes the kind of content that consumers might use in a retail store?

Audio Searches

Shazam is making a valiant effort to be the search engine of choice for audio. You may have used their mobile app to find music. However, you can also use it to find numerous television shows and advertisements. The difficulty is that the Shazam app is on your mobile device, and no one wants to have to take out their mobile device and hold it near the television during each commercial break.

However, consider if audio sources could be identified with Glass. Google has already gained the capability to recognise music. They could add additional functionality to identify music automatically, television shows, and commercials via Glass. Once they have identified an audio clip, Glass could provide you with an option to purchase the song, view You Tube clips of a show, or display an advertisement to purchase a product before a commercial is even finished!

This may seem far-fetched, but Glass already has the ability to do audio searches that identify music that you are currently listening to.

If you are a marketer, you will have to generate supplemental content that will correspond to the radio and television advertisements you are running.

Translations

Glass is already very good at translating words that are spoken into various languages. It would not be difficult for Google to take a search query and translate it into numerous languages and then deliver the most appropriate search results from any country in the world!

This would eliminate google.com.au,  google.de, google.com.ph, etc. There would only be Google.com. Rather than simply competing against others in your nation, you would have worldwide competition.

Apps Created For Glass

We are just beginning to witness companies attempting to optimise for the app store. Frequently, businesses make a signify

Can’t investment in an iPhone or Android app, and it doesn’t get many downloads since it has not been optimised for the app store. Get prepared for optimisation for the app store to effect Glass apps.

Currently there are a small number of apps that are available for Glass, but this list is growing. While it is helpful to know how to optimise for Glass app store searches, we really need to watch carefully for how consumers may engage our content differently with these apps.

If you have no apps, a smartphone is not of much use. If Glass already impresses you with its core functionality, imagine how it will be when there are thousands of apps available for it? 

Google Plus May Surpass Facebook

Google Plus is highly integrated with Glass. Much of the functionality of Glass involves Google Plus circles and contacts. You won’t be able to share pictures, or be the host of a hangout with your Facebook friends on Glass. You will have to convince them to migrate to Google Plus first.

When Glass users begin to convince their friends that they need to be on Google Plus, users will have to decide which social platform they will spend the most time on. If many Facebook users begin leaving due to Glass, the network will be ruined and Facebook will go downhill.

If Google Plus surpasses Facebook to become the number one social platform, Google search will also benefit since it will have much more demographic and social data. This will move Google even further ahead in search and differentiate them much more from other search engines.

Is your business making use of Google Plus, or are you still attempting to increase the number of likes you get on Facebook?

Search Becomes Increasingly Personal

When someone is performing a search using Glass, they are logged into their Google account automatically. This is important to marketers in several respects:

  • Personalisation becomes better as more personal data is collected via Glass
  • More Google Plus content will be displayed in search results, including contact info.
  • Due to the small screen on Glass, fewer results will be displayed from searches. Results are displayed via info. Cards. Therefore, the initial result has to be personalised and extremely relevant. Google’s knowledge graph will be used more to provide direct answers to questions rather than simply displaying web page results. 

Have you worked on building your Google Plus following so that your content will be displayed prominently in the search results for your followers?  Are you getting influential Google Plus users to distribute or publish your content so that their numerous followers will be able to view your content in their search results?   Do you know how to get your content into the knowledge graph? 

What Kind Of Time Frame Are We Talking About?

Since 2008, it seems that every year has been dominated by changes that have occurred due to mobile devices. However, the reality is that major trends don’t enter the mainstream in a single year. Generally these trends gain momentum over a number of years, perhaps a decade. Savvy marketers that watch how trends are evolving can be in a better position to take advantage of them, by preparing for them today.

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