5 Ways Google Search Results Will Change By 2016

Search engine results pages (SERPs), much to the irritation of search marketers who count on them, change constantly. Google is constantly making tiny, hardly-noticeable tweaks to the familiar layout of its signature creation, leading to gradual changes in user behavior and disrupting the expectations of optimizers who were counting on previous information.

Up until now, these changes have been relatively minor, even unnoticeable to most users outside the SEO community. Google removed the underlines marking the hyperlinks that made the list. The length of each entry and the numbers of entries per page have both changed over time. Various listing modifications have allowed sub-pages to be viewed in different ways based on the context of the search. But none of these changes has completely disrupted the status quo of the SERP: earn high authority, rank high, and you’ll get the most visibility.

Now, with the onslaught of new technology from wearable devices to far more sophisticated search algorithms, the SERPs are evolving faster than ever and in far more complicated ways. It’s hard to predict exactly how Google will develop these, since it intentionally cloaks its plans, but here are five changes I predict will take place by 2016:

1. The Knowledge Graph Will Take Over. Already, the Google Knowledge Graph has gained a ton of momentum. If you’re not sure what the Knowledge Graph is, perform a search for a movie or a famous politician. The box on the right you see with a run-down of basic information related to your query is the Knowledge Graph. It exists to answer user queries with commonly sought information, to spare users the trouble of hunting through traditional ranks and SERP entries. Right now, this information is housed in a box off to the side, but over the next two years, you can expect this presence to grow. The Knowledge Graph will collect more information on a more diverse range of subjects, appearing for far more types of user queries, and its prominence will likely grow to overtake the top entries. One day soon, I predict that any general query will be met with a massive Knowledge Graph entry, with external links only listed as a footer—meaning there’s little use trying to rank for queries related to general information or topics.
2. Social Results Will Be More Prominent. Now that Google has practically abandoned Google+, it seems more interested in forming close partnerships with other social media platforms. The search giant has had a deal with Facebook for years, scanning the platform for information and posts from major brands. Recently, it has forged an alliance with Twitter, allowing Google to index tweet information and withdraw it at will. In the next two years, I anticipate Google making more of these deals with more social media platforms, and integrating more social results into its SERPs. It seems likely that news-worthy or socially important queries will be met with a brief listing of popular social posts—and I expect to see these above the fold, replacing traditional top rankings with a separate “social” section.
3. Traditional Listings Will Sharply Decline. Partially in response to the rising importance of the Knowledge Graph and social entries, and partially just a user experience change, you can expect to see the number of listings on each of Google’s pages gradually decline. While you could once count on a reliable 10 entries per page, already you can see as few as 4 entries per page, based on the type of query you enter and the type of listings that appear near the top. New functionality will make this range fluctuate even more, though the majority of queries will have fewer entries on page one. That means higher competition and lower visibility for traditional, rank-based SEO strategies.

Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/04/27/5-ways-google-search-results-will-change-by-2016/