Google’s Newest Acquisition and What it Means for SEO
On January 27th, Google purchased their newest acquisition, the British artificial intelligence company, DeepMind. Here’s all you need to know:
What is Deepmind?
DeepMind was founded by former child chess prodigy, Demis Hassabis, and specializes in combining “the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms.”
Why Google purchased them:
Google’s vision for the addition affects their long term goals, such as perfecting the Google car, but its current implications are what the SEO community is talking about. DeepMind’s algorithms can help Google bots be more accurate in finding data when searching using Google.
How does this affect SEO?
Traditionally, users would search standard keywords, such as ‘restaurant,’ and get a myriad of results. As Google became smarter, the rise of longtail keywords began. An example of a longtail keyword would be “restaurant in New Jersey.” This is a simple request, so relevant and properly optimized sites would benefit from the traffic for such pointed searches.
However, Google feels they have only scratched the surface on the capabilities artificial intelligence can bring. Instead of just words or phrases, Google bots would be able to understand human speak and find exactly what a user requested.
For example, someone who is watching their weight and doesn’t own a car could type in the following request:
“I need a cheap restaurant that offers low calorie food within walking distance of Princeton, NJ.”
The bot would understand exactly what the user is requesting and give links to restaurants that pertain to all of the relevant parameters, no more no less.
Conclusion:
What we are seeing here is longtail keywords on steroids; a search engine that acts more like an extremely knowledgeable human than a machine. It’s what Ask Jeeves dreamt to be but did not possess the capability. Although this ability does not yet exist, there’s no telling what DeepMinds, Google, and their ever-growing wallet can develop in the future.