Google Search and Artificial Intelligence

When designing a Google search strategy, have you considered the role that artificial intelligence plays in determining your results? If not, you should. Artificial intelligence is transforming Google search and giving enterprise brands a leg up in local performance. Broadly speaking, artificial intelligence (AI) is used for the following purposes in Google search:

Finding and removing low-quality content and spam
Protecting search engines from manipulation
Helping to refine search ranking algorithms
Automatically categorizing businesses
Predicting user intent

Google isn’t the only search engine that uses artificial intelligence, but as the largest and most influential player in the space, its decisions regarding AI have the most impact on brand marketers. Almost all top search engines are now using AI to fight back against so-called “black hat” techniques that some duplicitous SEO agencies have deployed in recent years. Black hat techniques include keyword stuffing, cloaking, and invisible text. These techniques are all frowned upon by Google, and they could get your website removed entirely from search results. Currently, Google uses a combination of algorithm and AI to differentiate between high-quality content and spam. The more sophisticated Google gets in its use of AI, the less reliant the company becomes on humans for rating website quality. Machines are also learning to rank algorithms. Google can automatically create optimal lists from a set of possible outcomes and use AI to learn from those variables over time.

How Does Artificial Intelligence Impact SEO?

Brands marketers should care a great deal about how Google search results are impacted by AI. As machines get smarter, they’re better able to tell which content is high-quality and which content is spam. Marketers who publish relevant content on a regular basis are therefore put at an advantage as Google’s search engines become more intelligent. Eventually, it is likely that Google will use machine learning to target users based on intent and learn more from search context. As Google incorporates machine learning into more of its search products, legitimate brand marketers will find that their websites are rising to the top. Enterprise brands looking to stay updated on the latest changes to Google’s algorithm will often rely on the expertise of agency partners like SOCi to dominate in local search.