Gaming the Web: How Google's Search Engine Got Smarter

Daniel Russell serves as COO of Go Fish Digital, a cutting-edge marketing agency serving small, medium, and large companies and providing everything digital except video and email marketing.   In this interview, Daniel, an attorney, explains how law school provided him with not only "a business background," but also "the rules of the game." He notes that Bill Slawski, Go Fish Digital's Director of Research, is also an attorney. Bill studies Google's patents for insight into how Google is changing things. The company's founders started their careers as FBI contactors before becoming marketers, so the company, now with 42 employees, has some interesting roots.   Daniel presented, "Google's AI Is Smarter than You: What Does That Mean for AdWords and SEO Campaigns?" at HubSpot's Inbound 2018. He talked about how Google, as part of its DeepMind project, developed the AlphaGo computer. AlphaGo beat top players at "Go," an ancient Chinese boardgame with a "near infinite number of moves and possibilities" and no rules for "your next move." The learning algorithms, neural networks, and artificial intelligence that came out of AlphaGo research have dramatically increased the effectiveness and accuracy of Google's voice search. Daniel also talked about AI in relation to Google ad quality scores, SEO, and SEM, how AI might potentially affect them in the future, how AI has changed the search process, and the nonconformity of AI use on different platforms.   Influencer marketing, currently the fastest growing part of Go Fish Digital's business, intrigues Daniel. Consumers often tune out advertised content. When an influencer, a trusted "name" with whom target consumers identify, promotes a product/company, these consumers find the information more credible, even though they know that the advertised companies sponsor influencers. Today, influencer marketing is not necessarily just celebrities talking about your company. It may YouTubers talking about your website on their videos, Instagram postings, and less so, Facebook pages. LinkedIn can be effective for B2B services.   Daniel is available on Twitter at @dnlrussell or by email at [email protected]. His company website, Go Fish Digital, can be found at https://gofishdigital.com/