Since the launch of Google in 1998, online searches have changed tremendously. Google was started by a couple of college students, working out of a dorm room. Backrub, as it was called originally, was a search engine that used links to determine the relevance of web pages throughout the internet.
Google quickly gained attention from many people, from scholars and others in the academic community to Silicon Valley investors. In August of 1998, Andy Bechrolscheim invested $100,000 into the company, and the rest is history.
How Has Search Evolved?
In the 20+ years since it first began, Google and other online search engines have undergone tremendous changes. As more and more websites have been published and SEO has improved, search results are more relevant than ever. Companies like AWISEE help website owners with SEO so they can be at the top of the results.
The goals when providing search results are:
- Providing relevant results
- Providing direct answers and information
- Providing your results more quickly
How Will We Interact with Search Engines?
One of the first things that we will see is new ways to interact with these search engines. Since more than 60% of the world is now online, searching will become more intuitive. We’ll still be able to type or use voice commands, but there will be more ways to engage our searches.
- New Devices: These days, we can search with our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and devices that are connected to Alexa and Google. In the future, we can expect to see even more devices that can be used to search.
- Gestures: Another expected change is being able to use simple gestures such as hand movements to conduct searches.
- Conversations: Taking voice search to the next level, a search “agent” would be able to communicate with us in a conversational way, giving us the most relevant results possible.
- Thoughts: While not everyone would be interested in this, brain AI interfaces could allow us to search using just our thoughts.
What Ways Will Our Searches Be Personalized?
Google already does a great job of storing our data and giving us targeted ads that are inspired by our search history, how we interact on the web, and our demographic group. In the future, search engines will have even more data points they use in order to provide us with even more relevant material, ensuring we have access to a variety of things we are interested in. In future searching, Google will use AI and big data to predict our searches before we even execute them. This will provide us with the answers to questions we haven’t asked Google yet.
Will There be Alternatives to Google?
While Google is likely to remain at the top of the search engine options, there are some other competitors that are gaining popularity. For those that are looking for more privacy in their searching, DuckDuckGo is a great option. Bing is also a great alternative to Google as well. In the future, there could be additional search engines that enter the market. This will be impacted by tech companies, startups, and investors.
Will The Standards be the Same?
As searching evolves, these various search engines will be improving the standards as years go on. Currently, those that are familiar with SEO can easily add relevant terms to their writing in order to come in at the top of the search results, but there is minimal filtering for quality, accuracy, or intention. Increasing their standards can clean up the search results, leaving people with more links that are actually relevant to what they are searching, instead of finding the right link several pages in.