Wake Up, SEOs – the NEW New Google is Here

In that post I presented some concepts that, in my personal opinion, we SEOs needed to pay attention to in order to follow the evolution of Google.

Sure, I also presented a theory which ultimately proved incorrect; I was much too confident about things like rel="author", rel="publisher", and the potential decline of the Link Graph influence.

However, the premises of that theory were substantially correct, and they remain correct five years later:

1. Technical SEO is foundational to the SEO practice;
2. The user is king, which means that Google will focus more and more on delivering the best user search experience — hence, SEO must evolve from "Search Engine Optimization" into "Search Experience Optimization";
3. That web performance optimization (SiteSpeed), 10X content, and semantics would have played a big role in SEO.

Many things have changed in our industry in the past 5 years. The time has come to pause, take a few minutes, and assess what Google is and where it's headed.

I'll explain how I "study" Google and what I strongly believe we, the SEOs, should pay attention to if we want not only to survive, but to anticipate Google's end game, readying ourselves for the future.

Obviously, consider that, while I believe it's backed up by data, facts, and proof, this is my opinion. As such, I kindly ask you not to take what I write for granted, but rather as an incentive for your own investigations and experiments.

Exploring the expanded universe of Google-

SEO is a kingdom of uncertainty.

However, one constant never changes: almost every SEO dreams of being a Jedi at least once in her life.

I, too, fantasize about using the Force… Gianlu Ka Fiore Lli, Master Jedi.

Honestly, though, I think I'm more like Mon Mothma.

Like her, I am a strategist by nature. I love to investigate, to see connections where nobody else seems to see them, and to dig deeper into finding answers to complex questions, then design plans based on my investigations.

This way of being means that, when I look at the mysterious wormhole that is Google, I examine many sources:

1. The official Google blogs;
2. The “Office Hours” hangouts;
3. The sometimes contradictory declarations Googlers make on social media (when they don’t share an infinite loop of GIFs);
4. The Google Patents and the ones filed by people now working for Google;
5. The news (and stories) about the companies Google acquires;
6. The biographies of the people Google employs in key areas;
7. The “Google Fandom” (aka what we write about it);
8. Rumors and propaganda.

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