In the upcoming time, it will be fascinating to observe how Google weighs the priority of verticalization against the expanding prevalence of Google Maps as the first preference among searchers.
● Google will transform “from everyone’s search engine to everyone’s competitor.” Restaurant recommendations, weather, celebrity net worth, video games: just about every vertical you can think of has been influenced by a few related threads in Google’s recent development: Featured answers, Knowledge cards, Verticalized search experiences, Zero-click transactions (Reserve with Google), Transactions further down the funnel (Google Shopping, Google Travel), Carousels, Local packs
All of these trends are related to both technologically and strategically. Google is accelerating every possibly extractable source of information, including those that hope to generate commercial transactions, further into the margins, and occupying more and more of the center of the experience. Google aspires to be the greatest local search engine in the world and having more or less succeeded over the generic use cases, verticalization is apparently the next place to go.
Retail shopping
Google is much more likely soon to indicate local availability of products, even when the quest has no clear local intent. Further down the page for the same search, Google is primarily applying for the local listing as a channel for the customized presentation of content that meets the searcher’s requirements. Google has also converged massively in recent months on piercing into photo content and altering the layout of listings in order to highlight photos that match specific search queries.
Hotels
It’s worth considering hotels particularly in the context of local, because of how dramatically hotel search has improved in contrast with distinct local categories. In late 2018, Google launched a new version of the
Local Finder for hotels, with a higher number of filters and a nine-by-nine grid of hotel listings. But that’s already gone and displaced by the hotel’s section of Google Travel, which has hugely increased the profile information accessible for each hotel.
Restaurants- A wide array of other Google experiments designed to boost the profile of restaurants in search and capture traffic that might otherwise turn to Yelp or elsewhere for restaurant recommendations. The search for restaurants doesn’t seem to be dramatically different from generic searches, but there are several subtle variations, including the pre-eminent photos of dishes.
Service-oriented businesses
Google has been firmly tossing out new features across the last several years for its Local Service Ads, such as the Google Guaranteed money- back program and the Google Screened license verification service, the initiative feels only half-realized. Service-oriented businesses are trapped between having to pay for ads (if they qualify) or trying to rank alongside brick-and-mortar businesses in Google Maps and the local pack, which has traditionally been a tremendous hurdle for them. No doubt one of the reasons service-oriented divisions like locksmiths, garage door installers, and even attorneys have become notorious for posting spam.
Where is Google headed next?
Talking of mobile searches, verticalization is an inquisitive case where the desktop is really out in front of mobile as a center of innovation. Though, for instance, the mobile browser variant of Google hotel search is somewhat the same as the desktop, all those extra tabs feel jammed in, and the search experience isn’t as influential.
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