Google seems to be willing to reinforce trust with its users through Search updates to “make it even easier to find original content by and for real people”. Over the last months, people complained about Google Search results’ quality decline, notably on Reddit threads. Bearing this in mind, it appears that Google wants to assert its credibility on the market. In parallel, the rise of social media platforms – such as Instagram and TikTok – challenge Google’s powerful position.
Last July, Google Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan revealed that Google’s studies demonstrate that “almost 40% of young people, when they are looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search. They go to TikTok or Instagram”. Although Google still owns a 91% market share, this shows that search trends are shifting towards other types of platforms.
So, how is Google Search changing to keep up the course?
On the one hand, Google plans on removing irrelevant and low-quality content so as to support and elevate original and helpful content. “Our testing has found it will especially improve results related to online education, as well as arts and entertainment, shopping and tech-related content”, Google specified. This new strategy is then to boost “SEO-first” type of content, enhancing “authentic information” that a user has surely not read before.
On the other hand, Google also worked on optimizing and featuring high-quality reviews. The company is aware that reviews do help consumers in their buying decision process. So this update is hence about making “sure you find the most useful information when you’re researching a purchase on the web”. This clearly highlights Google’s efforts to show more in-depth reviews written by experts.
These updates are to appear progressively within the weeks and months ahead. As of now they only apply to English users globally.
