Stay Ahead: 7 Must-Known 2024 Search Trends and Top 3 Priorities

In 2023, AI-powered search became more popular, and the search results (SERPs) changed a lot with new things like Google’s Search Generative Experience and Bing Copilot (now called Bing Chat).

Google’s new AI, Gemini, can understand text, code, audio, images, and video. 2024, we expect it to show its full power on Google Search.

Google keeps saying that quality and user experience are essential. They use AI models to rank pages, and this year, they made a few updates to ensure content and page experience are good.

Google is okay with using AI to make content, but it has to be relevant and valuable. So, low-quality, AI-made content will only easily stay high on the search results for a short time.

Now, focusing on specific topics and entities gives you an edge. It’s essential to improve the technical part of your platform so it can be found quickly and offer a good experience.

Check out seven trends for 2024 and three things you need to succeed.

Seven Search Trends for 2024

1. SERP and visual optimization

In Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) and the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), rich results are set to keep changing. Ongoing optimization for the SERPs will be crucial, especially as zero-click results are likely to increase with the influence of SGE.

Interested in showing up in AI-generated answers or snapshots? The key is to consistently publish fast-loading pages that are packed with relevant, helpful, valuable, and unique content. Here are some specific areas to focus on:

1. Experiential and informational videos.
2. Web stories.
3. Podcasts.
4. Webinars.
5. Visual optimization.
6. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and People Also Ask (PAA) content.

2. Helpful content and content intelligence

A content strategy is crucial for success in 2024:

1. Identify and fill relevant content gaps.
2. Evaluate the performance of existing content.
3. Develop personalized content based on user intent and touchpoints.
4. Generate helpful content, such as topical and informational, localized, and visual content.
5. Emphasize high levels of E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) by publishing content written. Reviewed by subject matter experts or those with hands-on experience.

A user’s desire or need drives every search. Your content should aid searchers in achieving their goals or completing tasks. The user’s interaction with your content is as vital as the content itself.

To achieve this effectively:

1. Incorporate the creation of buyer personas into your strategy.
2. Develop content aligned with the buyer’s journey at every touchpoint.
3. Gather customer feedback to ensure content and user experience align seamlessly with the overarching strategy.

Content Intelligence

Build your content creation on content intelligence, which involves understanding what content will perform well based on data.

While various generative AI tools and plugins can swiftly produce content, it often remains uncertain:

1. Which content types will excel?
2. How to humanize content effectively.
3. How to forecast a content strategy’s efficacy.

Adopting a data-driven approach to assess content effectiveness will be essential for content creators.

3. User Engagement and Experience

The engagement of users plays a pivotal role in Google’s search results. Google recognize and reward content that demonstrates expertise. It is compelling and addresses searchers’ needs.

In 2024, your goal should be to enhance the quality and experience for searchers by improving your content and overall experience.

4. Personalized experience

Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, foresees significant evolution in search over the next decade, emphasizing a more profound and meaningful impact on users through increased personalization.

In line with this vision, Google introduced a personalized search experience on November 15, featuring a new Follow button. This enhancement aims to provide searchers with more information about the topics they care about directly within their search results.

Similarly, businesses must offer personalized experiences to their customers based on individual preferences, needs, and origin. Achieving this requires closer integration of Customer Data Platforms (CDP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to ensure a tailored experience.

In the competitive landscape of 2024, the critical strategies for success include maintaining clean data, and effective audience segmentation. It also includes implementing data-driven campaigns to personalize the overall customer experience.

5. Multichannel approach

Seize every opportunity in the growingly competitive Search Engine Results Page (SERP) landscape, where organic listings have limited space. Maximize the consumer experience with a variety of channels and content kinds:

1. Videos.
2. Images.
3. FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions).
4. PAAs (People Also Ask).
5. News.
6. Webinars.

Be present everywhere and maintain consistency across these channels.

6. Enhance your Local Strategy, focusing on personalization, localization, and experiential content.

For brands with a local presence, incorporate localized experiences to establish expertise, boost engagement, and drive traffic. When creating destination-specific content, consider:

1. Local posts.
2. Quality images.
3. Videos.
4. Web stories.

More than just simply on listings, management will be required. It’s essential to optimize the entire local consumer journey – from your landing page to audience interactions across all channels.

7. Social proof and Brand mentions 

Large Language Models (LLMs) draw information from diverse sources to generate results.
To effectively cater to your customers, identify the specific questions or topics they are searching for and tailor strategies accordingly.

Explore avenues to obtain or earn brand mentions and citations from reputable sources and influencers relevant to your field, preferably those with a significant social media following.

3 Key Priorities for Navigating Change Successfully

Discover the Top Three Priorities for Staying Ahead:

1. Robust Technical Infrastructure for Seamless Experiences

In 2024, a strong technical foundation is essential. It guarantees a robust user experience by centralizing data and facilitating meaningful dashboards and customer journey insights. This includes a component-based architecture for one-click personalized and omnichannel experiences, a secure infrastructure, swift server responses (CDN), and seamless integrations.

2. Adopting Fresh Metrics

The likelihood of decreased traffic is evident with AI providing answers in search results. As Google serves more content directly within search results, organic listings face further fragmentation, getting pushed down the page.

Traditional metrics, including rankings, need to be more meaningful.

In response, new metrics are gaining prominence. Brands should contemplate embracing these novel success indicators, such as:

• Rich snippet visibility.
• Pixel height and width.
• Impressions.
• Clicks.
• On-site engagement.
• Conversions.

3. Alignment of AI-empowered individuals and Organizations

Harnessing the power of AI in your daily tasks can enhance your efficiency and proficiency in jobs such as creating content outlines, generating images, crafting custom designs and summaries, and various other applications where AI can be beneficial.

Despite longstanding concerns about AI potentially replacing jobs, there’s no need for alarm. The current state of technology needs accurate AI intelligence, and it’s not poised to take over your job. Instead, there’s a crucial opportunity to adapt and leverage AI to enhance your job performance,” as highlighted by Eric Enge.

Conclusion

Acquaint yourself with AI by mastering large language models for forecasting, content generation, and user behaviour analysis.

Numerous applications of AI exist to enhance your daily productivity and the overall quality of your work.

Organizations and individuals empowered by AI will enjoy a competitive edge, proving more valuable than those not adept in leveraging AI tools.

Utilize the insights and strategies in this article to guide your decision-making on prioritization, understanding the reasons behind it, and how to foster cross-functional alignment within organizations.