Christian J. Ward, EVP, Yext

@wardchristianj

State of SearchWhy Location is the New Frontier of Mobile Search

Search 1.0

Keywords

10 Blue links

Intelligent Era

Understanding

Knowledge

The New Age ofExploration is Intelligent

Amazing Experience

Foundational Experience

Structured Data & Content

Unstructured Data & Content

HUMAN CURATION

SEARCH 1.0Classic SEO

LOCALSEO

INTELLIGENT ERA

• 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

• 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?

KNOWLEDGEpowers this

new age of exploration

“We're evolving in computing froma 'mobile-first' to an 'AI-first'

world”Sundar Pinchai, CEO, Google

146%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

50%Mobile searches that return

maps

S c r e e n w e r k , 2 0 1 2

pizza_

atm_

banks_

insurance_

car battery_

electronics_

doctors_

food_

fish_

wine_

cheese_

beer_

People_Places_

NameAddressReviewsPhone NumberEmailWebsiteDescriptionHours of OperationHoliday HoursPhotosMap Coordinates

LogoPayment MethodsCategoriesEventsPhotosLanguagesCall to ActionYear EstablishedSpecialties

Twitter HandleFacebook Page…

Where does all thisknowledge come from?

Data Ecosystem & Signal to Noise ProcessingData flows as input and output between most location services

• 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

Single Sources of Truth

“Alexa, What’s the first rule ofFight Club?”

Only a Single Source Can be Used for This, with Verification.

Classic Algos Struggle with This.

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

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

The New Age of Explorationis constantly changing

Amazon Echo

Intelligent Interfaces & Bots

IBM Watson Microsoft Cortana Siri (Apple)Google

Assistant

WeChat LineFacebook M

Oculus HololensMagic Leap

Virtual/Augmented Reality

Tesla: 2020 Uber/Volvo: 2021 Google: Ride in style

Self-Driving Cars

The New Age of Explorationis Intelligent

David Byrne | Google | LocationWorld

The New Age of Explorationis powered by KNOWLEDGE

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…”

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

This Stuff is Hard: Emotions? Sarcasm?

Three Data Levels

• Grossly Simplified: RAW, STRUCTURED, INSIGHTS

RAW DATA

POINT IN TIMEBUILDING BLOCKS

FREE TEXTSPOKEN

STRUCTURED

IN TIMEDIRECTIONALGROWTH &

DECLINESCHEMA

INSIGHTS

TRIGGERSRELATIONSHIPS

PATTERNSPREDICTION

ANSWERS

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

NEWSAlert

Search Engines Are Evolving

1. Searcher(Human)

2. Search Engine(Machine, mostly)

3. Source(Human, mostly)

Potentialanswers

Link to the Selected Answer

But Really…

ContentBlogsAd copyFeatured articlesWebpagesProduct write-upsMenu blurbsServices Lists

Unstructured…

YUCK!

Tombstone

Movie?City?Headstone?Prospectus?Pizza?Comic Book?

The Googoo Baby is very confused!!!

Why is This Getting More Important?

1. Searcher(Human)

2. Search Engine(Machine, mostly)

3. Source(Human, mostly)

Potentialanswers

Link to the Selected Answer

One Great Answer

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-endsolution that means customers 

NEVER HAVE TO OPEN AN APP OR VISIT A

WEBSITE.

What do you see?

Ellen Langer, Mindfulness

By adding the slightest definition, the pattern becomes confident

How Much Proof Do You Need?

- Searchmetrics, 2014

Schema

“Over 10 million sites use Schema.org to markup their pages and email messages.”

Which basically means no one is doing this well.

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%

There’s a Good Reason for This

EXHAUSTING

Schema Example: RestaurantGreatFood4 stars - based on 250 reviews1 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) 714-1489www.greatfood.com

Hours: Mon-Thu 5pm - 9:30pmFri-Sat 5pm - 10:00pm

Categories: Middle Eastern, Mediterranean

Price Range: $$

Takes Reservations: Yes

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.”

100+Location Data

Fields

NameAddress 1 & 2SublocalityDisplay AddressAddress VisibleCityStatePostal CodeCountryMain PhoneCategoriesLatitudeLongitudeClosed FlagSpecial OfferSpecial Offer URLBusiness HoursHoliday Hours

DescriptionWebsiteWebsite Display URLEmailsPayment MethodsLogoPhotosYouTube Video URLsMenuProductsEvents

BiosAdditional Hours TextAdditional URLsAlternate PhoneMobile PhoneFaxToll-Free NumberTwitter Handle

Facebook PageYear EstablishedAssociationsSpecialtiesBrandsLanguagesKeywordsAttribution Logo/URL

This Isn’t Easy, But It’s Critical

YOU must controlthe knowledge about

your business(or your client’s business)

@wardchristianj

Thank You!