Recent advancements and developments in technology may change the way we perform local searches in the near future. The manner in which individuals perform and discover local searches will soon be fundamentally changed through technologies such as digital assistants, big data, augmented reality and beacons. Thus, the way you currently market and advertise locally needs to change along with these advancements. Here’s everything you need to know about these upcoming technologies:
- Big Data – Advancements in Big data and Artificial intelligence analytics mean that search engines will soon personalise local results based on user information and preferences. For example, a search result for nearby clothing may be filtered based on accumulated information about your favourite brand, price-point, budget and preferred styles.
- Digital Assistants and Voice Search – Digital assistants will soon be integrated into everyday life – in your office, car, house etc. Assistants such as Alexa, Cortana, Siri and Google Assistant all share to common aim of universally connecting both the physical and digital worlds. In the near future, these technologies have the ability to provide users with the most accurate and relevant personalised local recommendations.
- Augmented Reality – With developments in augmented and virtual reality occurring faster than ever, it’s no surprise that it could greatly alter the way we perform local searches. Augmented reality could allow users to find local eateries, visualise precise locations of products and interact with local search results before clicking through.
- Beacons – Beacons are small devices attached onto surfaces; that transmit information, messages and prompts to smart devices. Thus, the potential use of beacons located at home, shops and work to produce more accurate local results is immense.
What do these advancements mean for you? With technology advancing faster than ever before, it’s important to keep up to date with these advancements. Local marketers and advertisers need to start thinking about how they can capitalise on these technologies to deliver the best results for their websites and businesses.
In other news:
- Google Assistant declared most accurate – Google Assistant has been acknowledged as #1 in most questions answered and most accurate among competitors. Its rivals included Apples’ Siri, Amazons’ Alexa and Microsofts’ Cortana. The test asked all assistants 5,000 different questions on everyday facts and compared its results to traditional Google Search. Here’s a summary of the results:
- Chrome to add additional warnings on ‘Not Secure’ sites – In October 2017, Google Chrome will add ‘Not Secure’ warnings in two additional circumstances:
- When users enter data on an HTTP page
- When HTTP pages are accessed using Incognito mode
Furthermore, Chrome recently issued a change requiring pages with logins to be over HTTPS. This is all being done in a further effort to push website owners to move their sites into HTTPS format.
- Google Search Changes in 2016 – Google recently updated its How Search Works site and announced that it had launched over 1,653 new search changes in the past year. These changes were the result of 9,800 live traffic experiments, 130,336 search quality tests and 18,015 side-by-side experiments. These figures potentially stress similar number of changes to come in 2017 and the need for website owners and digital marketers to stay updated.
