At Google I/O 2022 the latest news on the search system (and SEO)
Many, many announcements related to the boundless fields in which Big G’s presence is felt – the famous Google ecosystem, which covers practically every aspect of life, digital and otherwise, as we can see in this list of 100 things announced! – but nothing particularly surprising or revolutionary for the search system and hence for SEO. As the curtain has come down on Google I/O 2022, we can take an overview of this year’s event and the possible new things that will be coming to the search engine, so that we can possibly prepare ourselves and our plans to intercept them.
Google I/O 2022, Sundar Pichai’s speech
Perhaps it was impossible that for the search engine there would already be a further revolution after the one anticipated at Google I/O 2021, when the revelation of Google MUM and of the applications of artificial intelligence systems (also) to the Search system drew all the spotlights on Big G’s most famous product, but probably no one expected so little actual presence of Search within the event dedicated to webmasters and web developers that represents a real showcase for the Californian company (and that owes its name to the initials of Input and Output).
In any case, there was no shortage of points of interest within Google I/O 2022, which concern (again) the applications of technology to Search in order to be able to guarantee what, as Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai confirms, remains Google’s fundamental mission, today as about 24 years ago: ‘to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’.
Information and knowledge at the heart of the process
Technology is playing a central role in driving Mountain View towards this goal and ‘the progress we’ve made is due to our years of investment in advanced technologies, from AI to the technical infrastructure that powers everything,’ Pichai says in his introductory speech.
There are two key ways in which the company is advancing ‘this mission: by deepening our understanding of information, so we can turn it into knowledge, and improving the state of computing, so that knowledge is easier to access, no matter who you are or where you are’.
Pichai then goes on to recount some of the latest achievements of the search engine, which ‘during the pandemic, has focused on, among other things, providing accurate information to help people stay healthy’ (and in the past year, people have used Google Search and Maps nearly two billion times to find a place where they could get a vaccine against COVID), expanded ‘flood forecasting technology to help people stay safe in the face of natural disasters’ (and during last year’s monsoon season, these flood warnings alerted more than 23 million people in India and Bangladesh, supporting the timely evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people), collaborated with the government in Ukraine ‘to rapidly deploy air raid warnings’ (sending hundreds of millions of warnings to help people get to safety).