If you’ve been following the presidential race online, it’s likely that you’ve probably already noticed what the topic of my blog is all about today. There’s been a slight change in how Google is displaying their search results.
Search a presidential candidate on Google right now, and you’ll find a distinctly Twitter-like feed that allows Google users to have direct access to live-feed information from the Google platform.
In addition to helping Google users locate the information they want more quickly, this feature has the potential to eventually expand to celebrities and businesses, allowing them to have their own personal content feeds embedded within the Google platform.
Welcome to a new world: the Google Posts, or Podium, as they’re currently being called by news sources.
Google’s Circle of Life: Google Posts (or Podium) Opening in Search Results
Here’s what you need to know about this huge upcoming change that’s on the works at the Google-sphere.
What Do The New Search Results Look Like?
If you head to Google right now and type in the name of any presidential candidate in the race, as I did with Bernie Sanders’s name, you’ll find results that look like this:
The display features a small blue checkmark that indicates that Sanders is a verified presence. In addition to allowing users to scroll through a live feed of recent news, it’s easy to share the content directly to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or Email by simply clicking the social sharing icon at the bottom.
Who Can Use It? Google’s Wait List for Their Twitter-Lookalike is Open
While the new SERP layout is available only to these two parties:
- select businesses
- and the current US presidential candidates
…Many experts expect it to open up significantly in the future.
In fact, Google is currently offering a waitlist where you can request the feature for your business. While Google has been relatively quiet about this new change, the search engine giant has called it an “experimental new podium” that allows users to “hear directly from the candidates they’re searching for in real time…” The change allows the presidential candidates to share images, videos and text directly to the Google platform, where they appear instantaneously in the search results. Plus, since Google has made it so easy for Google users to share the content directly from the platform, it’s clear that there’s a certain viral intention present in the change.
How Google Posts in Search Results Works
Google began experimenting with this new feature last month when it was released as a way to allow political candidates a way to post lengthy responses to one another and expound on their stances on various issues such as education, gun control, and immigration. In combination with other recent innovations like Google’s mobile “Cards,” this new scrolling feed feature is a fantastic way for Google users to gain access to the information they need and want quickly and easily.
While many people are calling the new feature “Posts,” or “Podium,” Google hasn’t actually endorsed this name and the feature doesn’t technically have a moniker just yet. While the rollout of the new feature is still quite limited, the content provided by the new feature appears prominently in Google’s SERPs, which could be a fantastic platform for marketers and businesses down the road. The current format of the posts looks quite a lot like a Google+ post, although Google users are unable to comment directly on the page or follow the content.
As it stands now, the feature is ideal for sharing and rapid-fire updates on important social and political issues.
Why the New Google Posts SERP Matters
In addition to the political candidates currently using the feature, there are several small businesses, including Andrew Jewellers and A Healthy Choice, that have surfaced with the new search feature. For these businesses, the new search feature has the potential to revolutionize their search results by providing more traffic and easier social sharing. Because Google has such a huge reach (much larger than any social network), it’s clear that having content featured directly on the search platform could provide any business using the feature with a huge SEO boost.
Because of this, this platform has the potential to provide more reach than any other social media platform, which could make it the perfect place to deliver news, updates, and offers.
The Future of Google’s New Search Feature
According to Google’s current statements, there are no plans to charge for this search feature in the future, although there’s a good possibility that it could eventually become a feature that would compete with Facebook’s Sponsored Posts feature. If this happened, it would allow brands or individuals taking advantage of the feature to sponsor posts on the basis of keyword searches. While the future of this innovative new search layout remains uncertain, it’s clear that Google is committed to offering clear, relevant, and up-to-date content to users without offering too many hoops to jump through.
Yes, There’s Pros: The Top 5 Advantages of Google’s New Search Look
While Google’s most recent feature is still in a very limited roll-out stage, we’re excited to see where it goes. Here are the five top advantages I expect the platform to bring to content marketers who can get their hands on it:
1. Increased visibility
Getting to the top of Google’s SERPs has always been a battle and, if this new feature rolls out on a widespread basis, it could change the way we relate to ranking. While there’s no doubt that ranking well in Google through things like SEO, content, links, and referrals will always be important, the new feature could help small businesses and individuals display content prominently to their customers directly from a simple, easy to use platform. This, in turn, could help even small businesses build their online brands quickly and easily and without the expense so often associated with high-level SEO and content marketing.
2. More relevant content
Since Google’s new feature operates on a live-feed basis, it’s constantly shuffling the most recent content to the front of the list. This helps Google Posts viewers find the relevant, recent content they’re looking for without digging through pages of text. Additionally, it can help companies, brands, and individuals provide up-to-date content easily. In order to stay on top of the news, all Google users need to do is check Google’s feed again – no scrolling down a Facebook page or searching through SERP results that aren’t always ranked chronologically.
3. Easier access
When a user scrolls through Google’s new search feature, all they have to do is click once on the slide that catches their eye to be taken directly to the page. It’s quick, simple, clean, and amazingly efficient. In addition to massively cutting down on the time users spend searching for information and navigating through web pages, this change is also an amazingly efficient way to deliver information and it helps brands (or, in this case, political candidates, deliver a fantastic user experience almost effortlessly.
4. An enhanced platform for visual content
Visual content will perform especially well in Google’s new feature. Consider the difference between these two screenshots:
While the text-based screenshot is still informative and clear, the visual (with image) screenshot is the one that grabs a reader’s attention. Because of this, visual content is likely to perform incredibly well in these new results. This means that things like infographics, memes, and videos will convert even better than they do currently and, thanks to the easy social sharing link, will have the potential to go viral quite easily.
5. Content that is easy to scan
Because the Google platform was launched as a way to provide Twitter-like rapid fire updates to people interested in political news, it’s going to be a great place for interested Google users to grab relevant news snippets. This will help satisfy the purpose of a user’s search while also helping to spread information more widely and make easily-scannable content available to all Google users.
Conclusion
While Google Posts are still pretty limited, there’s no doubt that this is an exciting development in the Google-verse. In addition to adding a rich and highly adaptive feature to Google’s SERPS, this new search feature makes it amazingly easy for Google users to find exactly what they’re looking for in a hurry.
As the feature begins to roll out to more businesses and individual brands, it will become an ideal place for companies to share and distribute compelling visual content as well as information-dense textual updates. This, in turn, will help promote higher conversion rates, more social sharing, and enhanced user engagement.
While it remains to be seen exactly how marketers will utilize this unique feature, it’s one that, if used correctly, could revolutionize the front page of Google’s SERPs forever. And that’s something that we here at Express Writers are looking forward to seeing.
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