From the course: Danny Sullivan on SEO
Predictive search bots
- Another exciting area of SEO is what's happening in the world of bots and assistants. You might be wondering what's the difference between an assistant and a bot, and the reality is, maybe there's not a lot of differences. Assistants are things that you're used to interacting with, usually by voice, such as with Google now, the new Google Assistant, Siri, or Cortana, where you speak to them, and they come back and they give you a response. Or you may speak to them to tell them do an action, and if they understand how to do that action, they do it. A bot is a little more sophisticated. It's designed to take your request, and oftentimes, fulfill a series of requirements. So it's not just, hey bot, I want you to tell me the weather, it's like, hey bot, if it's hot, I want you to turn on the air conditioning. And the bot would go through and check, and say, yes, I can see that it's very hot outside, yes I can see that your air conditioner is wired up in a way that I can interact with it, yes I'm turning it on. Or, that you would tell a bot, I want to order flowers, and it might automatically pull out delivery addresses that you have stored, credit card information, the people that you want to send it to. You could say, I want to send flowers to my wife, and it knows exactly where to do, and how to make all that stuff happen. That's the promise, the reality is, whether you're talking about a bot or assistant, they're still fairly rudimentary. But things may change fairly quickly, as these are new growth areas, a lot of resources are being put into them. This is another one of those don't panic things, it's all still emerging, and there isn't a lot of great advice you can be given right now. It's more watch and see. If there are opportunities that make sense for you to do something with your business where you can interact with some of these bots or assistants, like Google Assistant, and Google now have ways for you to tap into them, then you should do it. And if not, again, see how it starts to develop, be aware of it, and move on the things that make sense for you to do, but don't panic if you aren't doing something. Just because, you don't have to be doing something just to be doing it.
Download courses and learn on the go
Watch courses on your mobile device without an internet connection. Download courses using your iOS or Android LinkedIn Learning app.