What Is the Future of Google Search?

It’s not hard to see where the internet is headed in 2018. Years ago, our imaginations could run wild dreaming up Hollywood-style scenarios in which the internet experience becomes vastly surreal. But today, Google is setting some hard and fast rules that are pushing content producers and distributors to focus on delivering top-notch content all the time, and the future is clear.

As long as Google’s goal continues to be to build a better internet, we can expect integration with the latest technologies, faster and friendlier experiences across devices, and relevant, accessible content fast. But how exactly will Google achieve such an end? We have a few ideas.

AMP Pages Will Work with Mobile-First Ranking

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) are already in use by more than a few major publications, and even small to medium businesses are converting select pages to AMP status to see how qualifying for AMP affects traffic as a whole.

Google rolled out mobile-first indexing alongside a rise in popularity of AMP pages. Without explicitly saying so, the search engine giant may have subtly plugged the efficacy of AMP pages as a tie-in with mobile-first indexing.

Since the version of a web page that appears on mobile will be the new standard for Google ranking, pages optimized for mobile viewing receive an immediate advantage. So if AMP aims to set a new standard for mobile viewing, it’s not unreasonable to hypothesize that AMP status will one day become a concrete ranking factor in Google’s infamous algorithm.

Voice Search Will Play a Bigger Role

We took a deep dive into how digital voice assistants will change marketing tactics, but improved natural language processing has greater potential than just standard marketing applications. Organic search could be ruled by voice search one day.

It’s a lofty claim, but voice commands continue to improve, and improvements continue to accelerate. When questions enter your mind, you’ll likely one day be able to quickly ask your voice assistant and receive an immediate answer.

Users Will Consume More on a Better Internet

The evolving role of optimized content in building a more robust search engine will, if it continues, lead to a better internet. By better, we mean:

More easily accessible – Content optimized for all devices in all capacities using all means of search will eventually make the mammoth-sized library of digital information accessible to anyone anywhere. That’s far in the future, but we’re at the beginning steps of it now.
Faster – It’s not just about internet speed, it’s about how well we can use upload and download speeds to make information more available on-demand. Content will become more dense, images will take up less space, and data will squeeze alongside the physical size of technology.
More relevant – Google has pioneered one of the cleverest ways to force people to make information matter. The search engine rewards quality content that contains usable information with rankings at the top of the SERPs, which in turn brings in customers looking for integrity and expertise.

With a better internet at their fingertips, consumers will be able to take in and learn from greater amounts of information on an ongoing basis. Smarter consumers will demand higher-quality products and more fully-realized services, and the cycle of improvement will continue.

The future of Google search isn’t so much a question of what new features upcoming improvements will entail – it’s a question of what impact search domination will have on internet quality. And if our predictions are correct, the internet is looking like a pretty amazing place in the near and far future.