Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the term used to describe the practice of encouraging traffic to a particular digital space, such as a website or social media page. Quantity and quality of traffic are desired to provide a successful outcome for the provider, the enquirer, and the search engine. If a search for “pizza” comes up with “plant pot”, users will disengage from the search engine and use a different one.
Meta data (data about data) helps with misspellings and when the user doesn’t quite have the right vocabulary for the data set to understand. Searching for “tie-rod” will give you “track-rod” as the meta data will link the terms as referring to the same thing.
When motorists use search engines to find the services that they need, they don’t always know the terms that would help them find someone to help them. Developing online content to accurately reflect what you do, with easily understood explanations, will give search engines a rich supply of content to provide the searcher with a result that is useful to them.
Social media platforms can assist with SEO by providing a space that is easy to update, and easy for potential customers to research further – filling in the data about the business (especially website details) will aid further the SEO of an organisation.
Search engines are businesses too.
To be a successful search engine, it must be really good at searching lots of data and quickly! Matching the searcher with the information that they need from a pile of information that increases by the second is a large task. That information is not available in neat, easy to understand formats – and pictures are fast becoming sources of information too. Search engines will up their game to remain relevant and to meet the expectation of their users. Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed to intuitively understand the query and quickly display accurate results will reduce the amount of time it takes to find the right information.
Contextualising this AI milestone into the automotive aftermarket
Currently a motorist must understand what repair they require and find the relevant repairer using searches such as “car repairer” or “mechanic”. Frustrated by terminology, this can mean a motorist with a dinged bumper can end up sending enquiries to mechanical repair workshops and waiting for replies before understanding a body shop is required. AI could understand from a photograph taken by the searcher what service provider was needed and direct appropriately.
Google’s Multitask Unified Model (MUM) is AI that hopes to provide these kinds of services to users, as it develops understanding of what content is available, and what the user is searching for, enabling more intelligent search results that will direct the user to what they want much faster than before.
What do I need to do to prepare for search engine AI?
The search engine’s self-preservation will mean knowledge of coding or website design will not be required to use this technology, but it will need to be fed with content.
Accurate representation of your business online will allow AI to make decisions about the relevance of your business to searchers.
If the information is not there, it cannot be conveyed. Encouraging content from other sources, such as reviews and social media, will allow the AI to understand the credibility of the business, and its suitability for user. Using genuine pictures of your activities will become more useful than a stock image, and regularly updating both images and text will become the norm, using social media platforms to tell the story of your business and develop content will assist SEO now and AI in the future.
Deep Thought
The ethical use of data, and who should have access to it, is a concern for the automotive aftermarket. Understanding how data is collected may shape the aftermarket’s place in the future of personal transport. It may also assist with customer assurance, and in information technology terms this refers to all users of the search engine.
Meaningful exchange of information (and subsequent business resultant of that exchange) would then also increase the likelihood of the search engine leading the field. It still returns to the need for the information to exist for this technology to be of benefit. Regular data audits or “health checks” will become commonplace for organisations or they will risk dropping out of the focus of the search engines.
AI systems are created on behalf of those that interact with them with trust. Responsible use of data has multiple benefits but will increase the amount of cyber security threats which will need to be addressed. Earning trust is critical for the success of this technology, but the extraordinary success of AI within sectors as diverse as MOT Testing and agriculture will increase our expectation of what can be achieved elsewhere. Further horizon scanning to quantum computing will revolutionise the fundamentals of computing, taking AI to new levels, enabling the realisation of boundless thinking – from self-driving private transport to finding cures for terminal disease.
Technology may not solve every challenge we face, but the AI-powered future must work for everyone, everywhere to be accepted and sustainable.