Evolution of the Search Landscape and Future Search Trends

Your customers are only a search query away. In essence, search is like the front door to your website.

Just think of it this way, It’s the most effective way to reach your audience because 68% of online experiences start with a search engine.

But here is the crazy thing… do you remember how painful the search used to be? I bet you don’t remember what it was like before.

I hardly do.
The evolution of search has a long history.
One that grew into being influenced by user behavior.
For decades, we’ve watched online search take a new shape.
So, to understand future search trends, we must look at what’s shifted.
Even thinking about just the past two years, a lot has changed.
Let’s see what search has in store for us in 2023 by sifting through what’s changed and where we’re headed.

How Has The Search Landscape Changed?

Do you remember Ask Jeeves, Lycos, or WebCrawler? Just the mention of those search engines is a major throwback.
They were once household names like Google is today.
The world of search has evolved from simple keyword queries to a complex, data-driven ecosystem that is constantly changing.
As user behavior changes, so do the search landscape. Think about it. Nothing’s changed the game more than the shift to mobile devices.
Other than the increased use of voice search, we’re now seeing the integration of artificial intelligence into search algorithms.
Additionally, the rise of visual search and social media as search engines has impacted the search landscape.
As a result, search engines are now better able to understand the search intent behind a query and provide more personalized and relevant results.
Google has made it clear that they’re putting people first by giving them the results they’re looking for.
There’s a lot of content for Google to comb through to get it right (which is why the algorithm keeps getting a facelift).
Google ran more than 700,000 experiments to get thousands of improvements on its search engine back in 2021.
These evaluations were tricky but well thought out to make sure users get quality results based on the experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) algorithm signals.

Google Algorithm Changes Redefine Effective Content?

There’s no doubt that the major May algorithm update helped Google redefine effective content, setting up new SEO trends for 2023.
Winners and losers were based on the following major items:

• Backlink presence: Success with garnering natural links from other websites.
• Core Web Vitals (CWV): Speed metrics Google uses to gauge a website’s user experience.
• Keyword universe: Number of keywords and key phrases included in a site’s SEO strategy.
• Page intent: How well a page’s content matches what searchers expect to see.
• Page speed: Faster sites tend to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
• UX features: Features that make the browsing experience easier and more efficient for users.

The main purpose of Google’s most recent update is to penalize low-quality content.
See the theme here?
Now is a good time to look at your existing content and evaluate if you need to optimize for user experience and technical SEO. The key isn’t to please search engines, it is to please users.
The Google “freshness” side of the Internet really is the best side because it is what’s best for users.
It’s all about up-to-date, helpful content which is what people want.
As long as you take Google’s advice and create people-first content, you’re golden.

Video Is a Priority

The video has blossomed into the most preferred content type.

That makes video a must-have in your marketing strategy.

With people watching an average of 19 hours of online video per week, it makes sense why more marketers are including video in their strategy and is willing to spend more on it.

Leveraging social media marketing with video will be one of the big-deal SEO trends for 2023.

I’ve even seen Google make visual updates as users search for more visually rich content for short-form videos.

Just like in this search where I searched for a recipe of the “viral Tunacado sandwich” from Joe and the Juice:

With more creators making short videos and more users shopping on TikTok, it only makes sense for Google to connect users with what they’re looking for.
YouTube has introduced Shorts to keep up with TikTok and Instagram’s emerging updates with the growing popularity of short-form video.
Short-form storytelling that educates and entertains keeps users on these platforms and drives leads.

With social e-commerce generating leads through live video or influencer haul videos, you need to make video a priority to help you stand out.
You’ve only had a few seconds to impress a viewer, so make your intro count.
What you have to say needs to resonate with them.
I wouldn’t tell you anything I wouldn’t do, and I’m sure you’ve come here from one of my videos (which I invest a lot in).
That should show you firsthand how important video is.

The SERPs Are Becoming Their Own Destination

In this era of “discovery,” consumers are looking for products and services that can help them make decisions from everywhere, including search engines.
Google understands this more than ever and is making efforts to provide users with a rewarding user experience that goes beyond pure search results.
They have been making a number of changes over the past few years that are helping searchers get more value from their searches.
Here are just a few examples of how Google is empowering users to move between search and content seamlessly:

• Quality and precision: To make money, Google needs people to use and trust its search engine. This takes putting content quality, relevance, and accuracy first.
• Speed: Although speed assessment has evolved since Google’s beginnings, it took time to get to the point where users can get information at almost the same time it takes them to blink.
• Convenience and intuition: Voice search and other mechanisms have greatly improved the search experience. A lot of search results cater to beginners, and then there are advanced features like Google Scholar for researching scholarly literature and articles.
• More automation, the less manual effort: Google recently used the capabilities of artificial intelligence to automatically improve its search algorithm—with no direct human design or development.

Focus on Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are a set of performance metrics that measure the user experience on web pages. They include the following metrics:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading performance and aims to ensure that the main content of the page loads quickly.
2. First Input Delay (FID): Measures the time to interactivity and aims to ensure that users can interact with the page as quickly as possible.
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability and aims to ensure that the layout of the page does not shift unexpectedly.

These metrics are super important for providing a good user experience on the web. Google certainly does think so, which is why most SEOs know what the above 3 definitions mean.
Web developers need to monitor and improve these metrics to ensure users have a good experience when visiting a site.
All these indicators, such as page load speeds and visual stability, dictate user behavior on a website.
Increase your core web vitals scores and you’ll improve your rankings.
A simple way to start is by optimizing pictures, shortening the execution time of JavaScript, and improving server response speeds.
If you want to know how your core web vitals look, just put in your URL here.