Google offers to revise its algorithm criteria in 2021 to include an aspect known as Web page Encounter. The term is defined in the document as “the unique and cumulative effect that a page has on a device since the browser was downloaded”.
In plain English, this means that Google will now be able to use data from the device you’re using to determine if the information on the site matches what you’re looking for.
The effect of this change on SEO and your business has been well described by some online marketers. The question is how much? Will it be a positive or negative change?
This change in future web trends is not completely new information. It is simply a re-framing of what is already the case in search engines.
The key here however is that Google has now created a platform that gives them the ability to take the search results from multiple devices and rank them with accuracy in its algorithms. This has been possible because Google has now created a platform where all sites now become publishers.
If you want to understand exactly how this works, it’s useful to understand what happens when you go to Google or any other search engine and type a word or phrase.
First you have the search results page. This is the list of websites you see on the left hand side of your browser (or in the results of any of the browser extensions like Google Toolbar). These results are from a search for the words or phrases you typed into the search box. The words displayed are based on the words that were entered by you.
Next comes the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). This SERP is Google’s view of the pages that are returned by the search. This is the list of websites that are returned and is displayed in the results of what would normally be the search results.
The next step is to drill down for information by clicking on the domain name in the results. This allows your to drill down to the content of individual pages, look at the page source, and more.
Finally, the results from the website are shown in the SERP. There you’ll see the information shown for that page.
In the above example, we’ve used a word or phrase to search for the term “buy.” You can see in the text that “buy” is the first result and that the top two websites are Google AdSense publishers. These websites are not your own sites, they are publishers that were chosen by google to show you results based on what others have searched for based on your words.
With this change, Google has given customers more control over the results they see and how they view them. It will be interesting to see what other techniques google engineers come up with for you to manipulate the SERPs.
