Working Ahead Of Google’s MAGI Launch
In case you’ve been living under a rock this past year, with the advent of AI powered tools launching all around us, Google have been working on a change to Google Search that builds search listing pages from the ground up, with AI technology at it’s core.
The new AI-powered Google Search engine will be here sooner rather than later and it will upend many businesses that have failed to invest in the right technology stack of their websites and mobile apps.
For years, Google have been pushing eCommerce businesses to adopt technology on their sales platforms that works in the semantic search sphere. This in itself has pushed a lot of businesses out of the search listings, that failed to react with changes of how Google presented search results, and how consumers are increasingly using Google for search.
In the world tomorrow, AI will take this work to the next level. So investing now will mean you can be ahead of the curve and reap the rewards that early adopters did over the past decade with other major changes Google have released into market.
Local businesses will be the major casualties here, as for the majority of time lack education on what affects their organic sales and how to influence their placements and visibility to suitable buyers. In a study that MAM conducted on local eCommerce retailers based in Berkshire in Q4 2022, we found that 45% of eCommerce retailers had almost no search presence for their core product lines, and that figure rose to 87% for local smaller businesses that transacted less than £250k per annum in online sales.
It’s no wonder that national eCommerce players dominate on Search and will continue to grow in the future, with the investments being made into their online tech stack.
The key actions that local eCommerce retailers need to take from our studies can be broken down into 5 areas
- Ensure your working with or working to migrate towards an eCommerce platform in the top 10 cloud hosted global players. As these have the widest support for the future and low cost development needs. i.e. Shopify, WordPress (Woocommerce), Drupal, Magento, Sitecore, etc.. Work away from custom & bespoke CMS platforms that keep you stuck with one agency.
- Check that your eCommerce setup is rich in structured data and valid schema markup (thus the reason to go with a platform like the above, because it’s done for you). This allows Google to read your website clearer and present you into the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages)
- Utilise all tools that Google have available in connecting your business to customer searches. i.e. merchant centre setup, Google platform connections to Ads, etc..
- Migrate to GA4 so as to ensure you are moving towards the latest tech in Analytics that will be your place for managing insights and audiences for the next 10 years
- Start working with a partner that can create a roadmap of website SEO build that will support you getting visibility in local, brand and generic search for consumers. So as to grow your business organically and show you up to more people