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Everyone loves holidays: spending time with friends, good food, and plentiful drinks. Nobody would deny that it’s nice to have some extra days to relax and recuperate, especially when life is feeling overly fast-paced and chaotic. People need time to rest and take it slow, but often this isn’t an option in the search industry. Unlike us, technology never takes a day off, and these constant developments mean that the search industry, and SERPs in particular, is always changing. This article uses the history of Google Search Engine Results Pages to show how much digital advertising has changed over the years, and the rapidity of these developments is staggering.
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History
When Google! Beta launched in 1998, it laid the foundation for the future of SERPs as well as digital marketing and advertising. Google! Beta let users search the web, and provided pages that matched keywords the user entered — it wasn’t until two years later in 2000 that Google launched AdWords, which allowed 350 companies to use pay-per-click advertising. A year after that, Google added Image Search. Already, it was clear that these technologies were evolving much more quickly than people had expected. Soon after AdWords and Image Search were released, Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook (2003), which sparked the development of more localised Google results (2004), Youtube (2005), and a new outlook on the division between public and private spheres online. By the late 2000s, Google had integrated images, video, news, and personalised content into its results pages, and was introducing the concept of “People Also Ask” under its search bars.
Then the first iPhone launched in 2007, followed by Google’s Android in 2010, which again revolutionised Search by introducing smartphones and mobile search functions. Now, both Google and Facebook have drastically improved their abilities to analyse and learn about each user, personalise content, and decide which ads and results are best suited to them. Search Engine Watch predicts that the defining trends we will see in future developments will be “Increased PPC presence, Voice search, Hyperlocal targeting, and Machine Learning.”
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Why Does It Matter?
Because of the nature of the Search industry and its perpetual development, it is essential that digital performance agencies stay on the cusp of all these technological revolutions. ESV Digital does this by staying informed about new technologies available for SERPs and SEM, and using the most effective developments to help their clients stay ahead of the game online. It’s easy for digital marketing agencies to fall behind the competition by not adapting to changes in the industry, updated formulas for generating results, or the advertising potential of new technologies like voice search or artificial intelligence. In order to provide our clients the best possible service, ESV Digital never takes a day off when it comes to staying up-to-date on every method and development available to us and the businesses we help grow – in our campaigns, ESV employs the newest, most effective ad formats and methodologies. Even though the holidays gave us all much-needed break, we still understand the importance of constantly learning and adapting to the very dynamic field of Search advertising.
To learn more about how ESV Digital stays on top of the latest developments in Search advertising, follow us on twitter @ESV_Digital_UK or on LinkedIn.
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