A look at the impact that Intelligent Personal Assistants, such as Google Now, Siri, Cortana, Facebook M and Hound may have on the way people search and how we do SEO.

1. A POST-PAGERANK WORLD:
THE RISE OF
PERSONAL ASSISTANTS APPS
Tom Anthony
SMX Munich 2016

2. SMX 2019 will have more presentations focusing on
non-web SEO than SEO for the Web.
PREDICTION

3. Hallo noch mal, München!

4. LONDON NEW YORK SEATTLE
@TomAnthonySEO

5. SMX 2015 - GOOGLE’S MISSION

6. The 5 biggest tech companies
have all introduced an IPA.

7. GOOGLE NOW

8. MICROSOFT CORTANA

9. PROACTIVE SIRI

10. FACEBOOK ‘M’

11. AMAZON ECHO

12. HOUND

13. 3 search concepts that relate to
Intelligent Personal Assistants
What might the future look like?
Some challenges and initial tips.
1
2
3

14. CONTEXT, PASSIVE SEARCHES
& SMARTPHONES
1

15. ‘DAILY INFORMATION NEEDS’ STUDY

16. GOOGLE ASKED:
“What did you want to know recently?”
THEY FOUND:
25,000 needs
21 broad categories

17. GOOGLE PUBLICATION ON IPAS
Source: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2685309

18. EXAMPLE #1: CONTEXTUAL ASSISTANCE
“The personal assistant should be able
to detect a change in the user context,
and make useful recommendations for
that context.”

19. EXAMPLE #2: FULLY PERSONALIZED
“when suggesting restaurants, in addition
to the spatio-temporal context, the
assistant personalizes the suggestions
based on the user’s cuisine preferences and
price sensitivity.”

20. WE TALK ABOUT CONTEXT A LOT

21. Context
Current
Situation
Time
Personalisation
Search History
Current
Location
Mode of Travel
Likes/Dislikes
Schedule
Companions
Query
Ancestor
Queries
Implicit query
aspect
Explicit query
aspect
Keyword
Spoken phrase Image
Search ‘mode’
(regular / maps / images)
Search
settings
Device
Anticipated
Situation
Past activities
Estimated
Intent

22. Context
Current
Situation
Time
Personalisation
Search History
Current
Location
Mode of Travel
Likes/Dislikes
Schedule
Companions
Query
Ancestor
Queries
Implicit query
aspect
Explicit query
aspect
Keyword
Spoken phrase Image
Search ‘mode’
(regular / maps / images)
Search
settings
Device
Anticipated
Situation
Past activities
Estimated
Intent

23. “A context is a set of user actions
corresponding to a single
information need.”
GOOGLE’S DEFINITION OF CONTEXT

24. EXAMPLES OF “EXTENDED CONTEXTS”
planning a trip
to Paris
organising a
wedding
buying a
camera

25. CONTEXTS: NOT ALWAYS ABOUT NOW
Half of search queries belonged to
contexts lasting longer than a month.

26. “top 10 things to do in Berlin”
“top 10 things to do in Paris”
“top 10 things to do in Zagreb”

27. “weather in Paris”
“easyjet Paris”
“louvre”
“airports in France”
“top 10 things to do in Berlin”
“top 10 things to do in Paris”
“top 10 things to do in Zagreb”

28. “weather in Paris”
“easyjet Paris”
“louvre”
“airports in France”
“top 10 things to do in Berlin”
“cheapest vacation deals Paris”
“best coffee near the Champs-Élysées”
“moulin rouge”
“Eiffel Tower entry price”
“top 10 things to do in Paris”
“top 10 things to do in Zagreb”

29. “weather in Paris”
“easyjet Paris”
“louvre”
“airports in France”
“top 10 things to do in Berlin”
“cheapest vacation deals Paris”
“best coffee near the Champs-Élysées”
“moulin rouge”
“Eiffel Tower entry price”
“top 10 things to do in Paris”
“top 10 things to do in Zagreb”
2nd February
15th February

30. “weather in Paris”
“easyjet Paris”
“louvre”
“airports in France”
“top 10 things to do in Berlin”
“cheapest vacation deals Paris”
“best coffee near the Champs-Élysées”
“moulin rouge”
“Eiffel Tower entry price”
“top 10 things to do in Paris”
“top 10 things to do in Zagreb”
CONTEXT:
Planning a
trip to
Paris
2nd February
15th February

31. UPDATING YOUR CONTEXT IN REAL-TIME

32. “best time to visit France”
“cheap flights to Paris”
“what to see in Paris”
GOOGLE CAN LEARN CONTEXTS

33. “best time to visit France”
“cheap flights to Paris”
“what to see in Paris”
GOOGLE CAN LEARN CONTEXTS
Google might anticipate your searches
weeks before you do them.

34. SMARTPHONES & CONTEXT

35. Screen size and keyboard type
are not important.

36. It can take
photos

37. It can take
photos
It knows
where it is

38. It can take
photos
It knows
where it is
It knows who
your friends are

39. It can take
photos
It knows
where it is
It knows who
your friends areIt knows
if you are
walking,
running,
etc.

40. It’s personal,
signed-in,
and taken
everywhere

41. It’s personal,
signed-in,
and taken
everywhere
It
interacts
with the
world
(beacons,
pay, NFC)

42. It’s personal,
signed-in,
and taken
everywhere
It has
natural
m
ulti-
touch
It
interacts
with the
world
(beacons,
pay, NFC)

43. It’s personal,
signed-in,
and taken
everywhere
It has
natural
m
ulti-
touch
It has
notificationsIt
interacts
with the
world
(beacons,
pay, NFC)

44. It's actually the PC that has the limited, basic, cut-down
version of the internet… it only has the web.
‘mobile first’
via Ben Evans

45. IPA’S VS BROWSER SEARCH
Apps can tap into more of these
than the browser can.

46. Context is important for better search results, and
for anticipatory searches.
Smartphones are better for context, especially
when using an IPA.
INSIGHT
Smartphone IPAs will be the best search device.
CONCLUSION

47. IPAS WANT ANSWERS,
NOT WEBSITES
2

48. SEARCH CATEGORIES
TRANSACTIONAL
INFORMATIONAL
NAVIGATIONAL

49. GOOGLE SAY: DO-KNOW-GO

50. 50-80% OF QUERIES ARE INFORMATIONAL
Statistic reference: 1, 2, 3

51. SHIFT AWAY FROM ‘WEB SEARCH’: DIRECT ANSWERS

52. SHIFT AWAY FROM ‘WEB SEARCH’: GOOGLE NOW

53. KNOW SIMPLE

54. OTHER IPAS ALSO GIVE DIRECT ANSWERS
Reference: 1, 2, 3

55. WHAT CATEGORIES CAN IPAS SERVE

56. INCREASINGLY ANSWERS NEED TO BE DYNAMIC
Time Based Location Based

57. GOOGLE NEED DATA FOR THESE QUERIES
Knowledge
Graph
Data
Partnerships
Everything Else
?

58. WEBSITES ARE JUST AN INTERFACE TO YOUR BUSINESS

59. 3RD PARTY INTEGRATION WITH IPAS
(probably)

63. A broader array of direct answers will require
IPA providers to get data from us.
Integrating your app into IPAs is a way to connect
your data into the IPA interface.
IPAs will prefer this model to sending users to a
website - you can jump the queue!
INSIGHT

64. 1
NATURAL LANGUAGE WILL
INCREASE QUERY COMPLEXITY
3

65. VOICE SEARCH IS INCREASINGLY POPULAR
Source: https://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/omg-mobile-voice-survey-reveals-teens.html (Oct 2014)

66. Source: /u/UpboatOarKnotUpboat
NATURAL LANGUAGE: GRANULAR SEARCHES

67. NATURAL LANGUAGE: FACETED SEARCH

68. brought to you by…
https://youtu.be/JfJOFvKDNu4

70. https://youtu.be/M1ONXea0mXg

71. https://youtu.be/M1ONXea0mXg

72. SEARCH QUERIES VS. COMMANDS
Requests to IPAs are
not just search queries.
Commands as well.

73. A single interface for all your requests.

74. Natural language search removes the friction for
performing complex queries.
Encourages compound queries and query
revisions.
Ties into leveraging your context and tapping
directly into data.
INSIGHT

75. THE FUTURE
4

76. WHAT PEOPLE WANT TO DO

77. CONVERSION VIA IPAS
?

78. ‘COMPUTATIONAL’ SEARCHES

79. FACEBOOK ‘M’

80. AMBIENT IPAS

81. CHALLENGES
& TIPS
5

82. How do we check Rankings?

83. How does Attribution work?

84. Will there be Analytics?

85. BUILD AN APP
IPAs are the new interface to your service -
build an app to leverage this.

86. RANK FOR 0
http://www.slideshare.net/crumplezone/seo-for-answers-ranking-0

87. OPERATE EARLIER IN THE FUNNEL
http://www.slideshare.net/jonoalderson/searching-higher-up-the-funnel-54123155

88. We are in a Post-PageRank world.
Web search will no longer be the
dominant model.

89. DANKESCHÖN!@TomAnthonySEO
DISTILLED NEWS
Our SEO Split Testing Platform is now live:
https://distilled.net/odn/