Travel brands should ensure they consider the search “intent” of prospective customers when optimising their pages, as Google turns more to advanced tech to serve results.

That’s the key message from the annual report by marketing agency SearchMetrics, in a study of 10,000 keyword searches and results on Google.

With the search giant’s increased use of machine learning and sophisticated artificial intelligences techniques to display results, smaller travel brands in particular must understand how a subtle shift is taking place in how SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) are served.

Larger travel companies, Searchmetrics argues, have an advantage as Google appears to rank them higher for content than similar items from lower-profile brands.

Google is looking to understand the “real intention” behind words used by consumers, in a bid to make results more relevant, says Marcus Tober, Searchmetrics CTO and founder.

“With the help of user signals, such as how often certain results are clicked and how long people spend there, the search engine gets a sense of how well searchers’ questions are answered; allowing it to continually refine and improve relevance.

For example, on travel-related searches, he explains:

“A searcher who types ‘things to remember for my beach holiday’ into the search box is most likely looking for a short list for example; someone who types ‘height Mont Blanc’ wants a single piece of information, while a query like ‘nice beach mallorca’ is most likely wanting a series of images and a ‘how to pack a suitcase’ query might be best served with video content.”

Interestingly, word count on content is beginning to become a determininh factor of the placement of sites in search results.

This, according to Searchmetrics, is due to top performing results generally more detailed, cover more aspects of a topic (destination, for example).

The number of keywords, however, is no longer as important as previously thought of, Tober argues.

“Google is no longer just trying to reward pages that use more matching keywords with higher rankings; it is trying to interpret the search intention and boosting the content that is most relevant to the query.”

Finally, backlinks are also becoming less important to achieve a high ranking in SERPS.

It remains a “strong correlation”, Tober says, but things have changed, not least because mobile searches are now so popular and, generally, pages are more often than not “shared” or “liked”, rather than linked to.

He concludes:

“Google’s application of machine learning to evaluate search queries and web content means that the factors it uses to determine search rankings are changing all the time.

“They are becoming fluid and vary according the context of the search (is it a travel search? An online shopping search? etc.) and according to the intention behind each individual query.”

NB: Full report on Google Ranking Factors available here.