Why Location Is the New Frontier of Mobile Search by Christian Ward

1. Christian J. Ward, EVP, Yext
@wardchristianj
State of Search
Why Location is the New Frontier of Mobile Search

2. Keywords
10 Blue links
Understanding
Knowledge

3. The NewAge of
Exploration is Intelligent

4. Amazing Experience
Foundational Experience
Structured Data
& Content
Unstructured
Data & Content
HUMAN
CURATION
SEARCH 1.0
Classic SEO
LOCAL
SEO
INTELLIGENT
ERA

5. • We have accepted this Blue
Link reality
• With 10 Possibilities, Errors
are Expected
• But, honestly, this is sad…
• We have tortured the
unstructured data to game
the Algo and produce blue
links
How We Got Here

6. • Structured Data leads the
way to answers
• Machine Learning and
Artificial Intelligence leverage
this
• The Interface finally begins to
return Answers, not blue
links, breaking the whole
interface paradigm
Where Are We Going?

7. KNOWLEDGE
powers this
new age of exploration

8. “We'reevolvingincomputingfrom
a'mobile-first'toan 'AI-first'world”
Sundar Pinchai, CEO, Google

9. YoY growth in intelligent location search
T h i n k W i t h G o o g l e , 2 0 1 6

10. Mobile searches that return maps
S c r e e n w e r k , 2 0 1 2

11. pizza_

12. atm_

13. banks_

14. insurance_

15. car battery_

16. electronics_

17. doctors_

18. food_

19. fish_

20. wine_

21. cheese_

22. beer_

23. People_
Places_
Name
Address
Reviews
Phone Number
Email
Website
Description
Hours of Operation
Holiday Hours
Photos
Map Coordinates
Logo
Payment Methods
Categories
Events
Photos
Languages
Call to Action
Year Established
Specialties
Twitter Handle
Facebook Page…

24. Where does all this
knowledge come from?

25. Data Ecosystem & Signal to Noise Processing
Data flows as input and output between most location services

48. • Bad data is a killer to AI and
machine learning
• The systems begin to “learn
wrong” and can’t easily “un-
learn” data
• The once “allowable” bad
result out of ten now
completely cripples the new
Interface
Now What if The Data Is Wrong

49. Single Sources of Truth
“Alexa, What’s the first rule of
Fight Club?”
Only a Single Source Can be Used for This, with Verification.
Classic Algos Struggle with This.

50. Am I Exaggerating?
Anyone Remember Long Term Capital Management?
• “using quantitative models to exploit deviations from
fair value…”
• “finance veterans, PhDs, professors, and two Nobel Prize
winners…”
• “LTCM triggered more than $1 Trillion in default risks
and lost $4.4B in one year
• One of the single biggest causes of the global, financial
meltdown

51. 76%
visit a business within one day
Total Location Search users
28%
of these searches
result in a purchase
T h i n k W i t h G o o g l e , 2 0 1 6

52. The NewAge of Exploration
is constantlychanging

53. Amazon Echo
Intelligent Interfaces & Bots
IBMWatson Microsoft Cortana Siri (Apple) Google Assistant
WeChat LineFacebook M

54. Oculus HololensMagic Leap
Virtual/Augmented Reality

55. Tesla: 2020 Uber/Volvo: 2021 Google: Ride
in style
Self-Driving Cars

56. The NewAge of Exploration
is Intelligent

57. David Byrne | Google | LocationWorld

58. The NewAge of Exploration
is powered by KNOWLEDGE

60. Headlines: Mobile First Indexing
“To make our results more useful, we’ve begun experiments to
make our index mobile-first. Although our search index will
continue to be a single index of websites and apps, our
algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a
site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand
structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in our
results…”

61. What Are We Searching For?
• Every year, we debate the death of SEO
• AI, Machine Learning, Personalization – are all feeding
into the move to Voice & SEO’s demise

62. This Stuff is Hard: Emotions? Sarcasm?

63. Three Data Levels
• Grossly Simplified: RAW, STRUCTURED, INSIGHTS
RAW DATA
POINT IN TIME
BUILDING
BLOCKS
FREE TEXT
SPOKEN
STRUCTURED
IN TIME
DIRECTIONAL
GROWTH &
DECLINE
SCHEMA
INSIGHTS
TRIGGERS
RELATIONSHIPS
PATTERNS
PREDICTION
ANSWERS

64. Three Data Levels
• Grossly Simplified: RAW, STRUCTURED, INSIGHTS
Stock Price
$58.00 /
share
News Stock
Overlay
News
Triggers High
Stock Chart
$58.00 is
a 52wk
High
NEWS
Alert

65. Search Engines Are Evolving
1. Searcher
(Human)
2. Search Engine
(Machine, mostly)
3. Source
(Human, mostly)
Potential
answers
Link to the Selected Answer

66. But Really…
Content
Blogs
Ad copy
Featured articles
Webpages
Product write-ups
Menu blurbs
Services Lists
Unstructured…
YUCK!

67. Tombstone
Movie?
City?
Headstone?
Prospectus?
Pizza?
Comic Book?
The Googoo
Baby is very
confused!!!

68. Why is This Getting More Important?
1. Searcher
(Human)
2. Search Engine
(Machine, mostly)
3. Source
(Human, mostly)
Potential
answers
Link to the Selected Answer
One Great Answer

69. Pichai recently noted that Google has been
“laying the foundation for this for
many, many years.”
This has led Google to develop an end-to-end
solution that means customers
NEVER HAVE TO OPEN AN APP OR
VISIT A WEBSITE.

70. What do
you see?
Ellen Langer, Mindfulness

71. By adding
the
slightest
definition,
the
pattern
becomes
confident

72. How Much Proof Do You Need?
- Searchmetrics, 2014

73. Schema
“Over 10 million sites use Schema.org
to markup their pages and email
messages.”
Which basically means no one is doing this well.

74. Really? 10 Million?
We passed One Billion Websites in September of
2014, and its closer to 1.08B today
10,000,000 / 1,080,000,000 = .926%
Nice work, everyone!
< 1%

75. There’s a Good Reason for This
EXHAUSTING

76. Schema Example: Restaurant
GreatFood
4 stars - based on 250 reviews
1 Madison Ave New York, NY 10010
Latitude: 40 deg 44 min 54.36 sec N
Longitude: 73 deg 59 min 8.5 sec W
(408) 714-1489
www.greatfood.com
Hours: Mon-Thu 5pm - 9:30pm
Fri-Sat 5pm - 10:00pm
Categories: Middle
Eastern, Mediterranean
Price Range: $$
Takes Reservations: Yes

77. Back to Tombstone
Q: “Alexa, What is a Tombstone?”
A: “A headstone or gravestone placed over a grave.”
Q: “Alexa, Is Tombstone a movie?”
A: “No, a gravestone is not a film.”
Q: “Alexa, is there a movie called Tombstone?”
A: “Yes, there is a film called Tombstone.”
Q: “Alexa, can you order me a Tombstone pizza?”
A: “I didn’t see that in your past orders, so I added a
Tombstone pizza to your shopping list.”

78. 100+
Location Data
Fields
Name
Address 1 & 2
Sublocality
Display Address
Address Visible
City
State
Postal Code
Country
Main Phone
Categories
Latitude
Longitude
Closed Flag
Special Offer
Special Offer URL
Business Hours
Holiday Hours
Description
Website
Website Display URL
Emails
Payment Methods
Logo
Photos
YouTube Video URLs
Menu
Products
Events
Bios
Additional Hours Text
Additional URLs
Alternate Phone
Mobile Phone
Fax
Toll-Free Number
Twitter Handle
Facebook Page
Year Established
Associations
Specialties
Brands
Languages
Keywords
Attribution Logo/URL
This Isn’t Easy, But It’s Critical

79. YOU must control
the knowledge about
your business
(oryourclient’sbusiness)

80. @wardchristianj
Thank You!