Google’s Latest Rule Changes Will Likely Impact Your Online Business

Google Changes its Rules and Impacts Your Online Business. Here’s How…

Changes (and tragedies) often come in threes. And Google’s latest rule changes certainly haven’t disappointed. Three new changes have come (or are coming) to the monster otherwise known as Google that will directly impact how you operate your ecommerce business, and how customers find your site. Here’s the latest:

The Super Cookie

We all know about cookies, and realize how large a role cookies play in online ads and marketing. Cookies are a line of code that is integrated into browsers to help identify a user when they visit websites. But Google is actually developing a real hush-hush anonymous identifier for advertising (AdiD) that could replace cookies. Seeing that Google consumes one third of online revenue, the chances of their new system becoming influential is, well, very likely.

Google’s new cookie replacement, dubbed the “super cookie,” is likely going to give users more control over how they’re tracked online. But it also puts a lot more power into the hands of Google as well, by doing away with third-party cookies.

This new form of tracking will probably fill the void that’s currently in place due to today’s cookie – it’ll do better to track consumers over multi-platforms, namely computers, tablets and phones.

Searching For Keywords Is Over?

They talked about it since 2011, and lo and behold, they’ve stayed true to their word. Google has implemented a new SSL (secured socket layer) encryption for all searches, providing more protection on personalized search results.

What this means is that marketers and retailers can’t get information on an individual query, but can still determine if a shopper came to their site via Google through an organic search result. They can also still get an aggregated list of the top 1000 search queries that drove traffic to their site for the past 30 days via Webmaster tools. But for people who loved Google’s old keyword tool as a way to compile SEO-based content, you’ll be sad by the changes.

What this change will do is likely drive marketers to spend more money on paid search, vs. organic search, since paid search will provide far more data and information than organic search results.

Flight Of The Hummingbird

Google’s massive change in its algorithm, known as Hummingbird, affects something like 90% of all searches, and is the biggest update, some say, since 2000. This latest change is context-inspired, and aims to address the changes in voice-directed searches, as well as to provide more relevant results for mobile users who are less likely to perform multiple “refinement” searches.

Considering how someone searches online when using voice control is key to this change. We all had to refine the way we “think” when we started typing our searches into the Googles of the world: Cheap Restaurants NYC is not how we usually talk. Before the Internet we’d have asked a friend “Where can I find a cheap restaurant in New York?” Well, search engines are beginning to factor that type of search into their algorithms, thanks to the progress of voice-directed searches.

So, what’s this mean for you?

You already make decisions for your business based on Google, and with these three changes, you’re going to have to tweak those decisions. There are many ways for you to take advantage of the changes headed down the pike, including rewording your web content, revisiting your keyword lists, and preparing for a shift in the world of cookies. It can seem overwhelming, but OperationROI is here to help. Call us at 1-888-277-5429 or fill out our contact form to see how we can help you through Google’s big changes.