Good morning, Search Marketer, and have you read Accelerando?
The book is a series of short stories about humanity's move toward technological singularity. The first chapter starts with a guy named Manfred wearing what is essentially Google Glass long before Google released the product (maybe it inspired them, who knows?). And it ends with a collective superintelligence uploaded onto a communications network. Google's latest move to encourage lead form collection in SERPs without having customers ever leave Google made me think of the book this morning for some reason.
The search engine already has the largest search market share in the US (and beyond). Many local businesses rely on GMB to drive footfall and online business. Plus, SEOs have been complaining for a while that SERP features like rich snippets encourage searchers to stay on Google instead of clicking through to websites. Now PPC practitioners can opt in to something similar with the new leads form extension (read more about it in the article below).
In response to the PPC announcement, someone on Twitter asked if we'd even need websites anymore eventually. It's as if Google is testing ways to be the point of singularity across all internet and digital marketing.
Carolyn Lyden
Director of Search Content
