It used to be that your small business could be found online through search results that were affected by search engine optimization and pay-per-click ads.

All of that is rapidly changing, though, with the new advent of programs such as Google Assistant, Home, and Amazon Echo. While these new technologies can be stressful at first, it’s definitely possible to make sense of them by taking it one piece at a time and figuring out how to use this technology to your benefit.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at what these new digital assistants are, and in the process, we’ll figure out how they’re affecting your search results and what can be done to take advantage of these new technologies. Let’s start with what these are.

This is an image from Amazon advertising the new Echo Dot. These devises will impact how customers find local businesses and tactics used for Local SEO.

What are these digital assistants?

Amazon Echo was the first commercially available home search device that was released on the market. Not one to lag behind, Google responded by releasing Google Home to directly compete with this offering by Amazon.

Amazon Echo has since received very positive reviews, many customers pleased by its ability to search for just about anything and manage your calendar all by calling out to the search device’s AI called Alexa.

Many have claimed that this is simply a non-portable version of something that already exists on iPhone-Siri. They claim that this will inevitably lead to Google bringing on board its own virtual assistant.

The day for this to be implemented seems to be here already, with Google able to use the brainpower of its Google Home device, Google Assistant, to power the search results of its mobile devices. This will change the reliance on AdWords and other similar proprietary systems that were already in place.

Google Home mostly offers the same experience as Amazon Echo. What sets it apart is the software upgrades that are possible as well as the search engine that will be driving the actual hardware. That tool is Google Assistant, and it will use its advanced algorithm to expand on the search experience.

This all represents a massive shift in what these search engines are capable of doing in order to build better engines but also to make our world more accessible as a whole. Adding to this, Google released an app called Allo that features Google Assistant in its system already. Google has released the app in order to get peoples’ opinions on how it is and where it can go from here.

How will digital assistants affect search results?

Google’s snippet answers are becoming all-important now that Google Assistant has risen in prominence. It seems to favor those results that were already high on the list over other, lower results.

The way Google’s snippet system works is that when asked a question, Google will pick one of the first, most relevant results and start with, “According to…” before finishing the answer. The answers here will usually be a single sentence so as to minimize the amount of time that a user will have to wait to get useful, useable information.

For the purpose of marketing and search engine optimization, it’s becoming more and more important to focus on these snippet answers and to get your results high on the list. In effect, this is changing the whole game when it comes to search.

This all boils down to trying to get a rich snippet, which features the information that a user will need right away and somehow getting your content to the top of the page. Should you be able to get a rich snippet, you’ll most likely see your results favored over other results.

It’s important to understand too that while rich snippet sites benefit from the increased traffic, this will also lessen the impact of other, lower ads on the list. If you happen to have a rich snippet, you’re in effect set for an explosion of traffic. If you’re just shy of that rich snippet, however, your site will tend to suffer as a result. There’s a definite give and take relationship when it comes to rich snippets.

When it comes to determining how digital assistants will impact your business, it’s safe to say that this technology is causing a tectonic shift in the way that small businesses conduct their search engine optimization strategy. Instead of fearing this change, however, we should understand the intricacies of it and understand just how we can use this new technology to our advantage and to the advantage of our small business.