Street Fight’s November Theme: Google’s World
This post is the latest in our “Google’s World” series. It will be an editorial focus for the month of November, and you can see the rest of the series here.
Another month has passed in this tornado of a year. As we enter November, it means it’s that time again — Street Fight editors are planting a flag for the coming month’s editorial focus. In our monthly meeting of the minds to determine a fitting theme, one topic emerged from the fray: Google’s World.
This is shorthand for the fully fleshed-out concept: “It’s Google’s world… we’re all just living in it.” The main thrust is that Google’s search dominance gives it enormous control in impacting the fate of businesses everywhere who rely on search for traffic and customer acquisition.
Google’s ongoing updates to the search algorithm, ranking factors, and SERPs continue to have ripple effects on marketers everywhere. It’s becoming more challenging to follow the moving target of SEO effectiveness. This game has its own set of rules when it comes to local search.
The most recent moves were made at Google’s Search On 2020 event, where it advanced natural language search and the use of machine learning to infer user intent. The company’s landmark BERT integration was expanded and now applies to nearly all English-language queries. Visual search also took a few steps forward.
Google’s impact of course isn’t a new topic. We’ve been covering its moves for years, including transforming the SERP to be more transactional and knowledge-oriented (e.g., the Knowledge Panel). These moves end up helping or hurting various entities, much to the chagrin of the latter, including companies like Yelp.
We also chose this theme as Google finds itself embroiled in an antitrust suit from the Justice Department for the level of power it has amassed and the tactics it deploys to maintain that position. Will the outcome have an impact on Google’s continued dominance and control on all things search?
We’ll be answering these questions and others throughout the month. As frequent Street Fight readers know, we have an overarching theme each month. Though we continue to reactively cover news from the local commerce world, these themes add a proactive element.
The themes collectively make up Street Fight’s editorial charter. Individually, they include everything from voice search to autonomous vehicles (see them all here). Some are ongoing staples, while others are time-anchored trends that dominate the Covid era, as seen in the past few months.
So, look out for the tag “Google’s World.” We’ll label posts so you can discover them daily or actively browse them. Coverage will include our own daily reporting, deeper analytical dives from columnists, and a steady flow of contributions from business leaders developing first-hand insights.
Speaking of which, we’ll take this chance to remind you about our editorial contributor program. If you have unique perspective and insights, we’d love to hear from you. We’re prioritizing and fast-tracking any submissions that fall under our Future Finders column or any of the Google angles cited above.
Reach out to us with suggestions for monthly themes, opportunities to contribute, and to amplify your brand messaging alongside this thematic coverage. On that note, we’re excited to also announce that we’ve launched the latest version of our media kit. Check it out, and come be part of the narrative.
