In a recent keynote address delivered at the SMX West Q&A session held at San Jose between March 11 – 13, 2014, Amit Singhal, Senior VP and Software Engineer at Google talked about predictive technology used in Google Now http://www.google.com/landing/now/ and how it would impact the future of search and internet.

Singhal explained that Google Now was built for mobile devices and keeping in mind the needs of mobile users because future growth of search and internet was to come from these segments. As a matter of fact Hummingbird was also introduced by Google keeping in mind the future of the mobile platform and that a humane approach was required towards search that was organic and based on human thought process rather than based on algorithmic calculations.

For any brand to be successful, it is essential that it is visible in search engine results that work within a marketing strategy functioning as per Hummingbird guidelines since this is the direction that the future is likely to take.

When asked about how social data from Google+ affects rankings, Singhal mentioned that things should be looked at from the user’s perspective. The authority of those people affiliated with content was a relevant factor and the second relevant factor was trust in something that was shared by a friend or a contact. In other words Google put a lot of relevance on social signals.

Among other factors that influence rankings Singhal mentioned that quality content was an important criterion. For example if he felt that a site was good for learning and that he should send a link of that site to his son, then that meant that the site was indeed a good one and that is the way in which the engineers at Google also classified the links.

Asked whether more answers will appear in search results, Singhal mentioned that the addition of the Knowledge Graph had been a significant addition to the technology that was used at Google and their objective was to build Google like a Swiss Army Knife that was multi-functional and could help users in performing multiple activities. In other words, if a user did a search it was important to have the results available on mobile devices even though there were at times situations where the information in the search results was too much and not all of it could be read.

Asked about how marketers should prepare themselves for the coming shifts and changes, Singhal replied that it was phenomenal in the way in which technology and information worked and co-existed as both were equalizers. He predicted that in the coming years the mobile devices will get smaller and would be owned by billions more people. The real challenge for marketers would be to determine how to serve those billions of people with limited devices that had tremendous power.
Singhal went on to say that in the next five years the texture of search will change with the limitations and powers of mobile and a user should be able to interface with Google as best from a mobile device.