Last week, Google introduced their own custom keyboard for mobile devices. If you are unfamiliar, iOS offers the ability to build apps for keyboards to make typing (and texting) easier (and more fun/interactive). Examples of these are Giphy’s gif search, Bitmoji (for sending fun emojis of yourself), and Hummingboard, which is a more sophisticated version of a spell/grammar checker.
I already use a handful of custom keyboards, but they aren’t sticky enough for me to use any of them all the time. I still default to the standard keyboard when typing.
Google’s GBoard has introduced a new way to find and send info quickly via a custom keyboard. This means you can inject information into conversations quicker and with the trust that Google will be your fact-checker.
But what does an app like this mean for the SEO world?
As you can see below, results within the keyboard show a single card at the bottom.
You can see a strong bias toward both the Knowledge Graph and recent news. Due to the lack of real estate, it’s safe to say that the first result is what wins here.
To test the experience, I conducted a general brand search for “Yelp.” The results are below via screenshots.
The first result is a general knowledge graph card. Hovering on that shows a Google search result URL.
If you continue through to that URL, you end up searching for the actual entity name, Yelp Corporation, in this scenario.
I think Google still needs to sort out some of the specifics in the customer journey, but for now, we need to think about how this experience interrupts the greater SEO world.
I’m not sure what Google is expecting in terms of adoption rates, but I don’t imagine this becoming a major player in the search world. Until either custom keyboards become more mainstream or the UX is heightened for the searches themselves, SEOs shouldn’t feel too threatened by this.
Either way, I encourage you to download the app and run your own tests. It’s always worth your while to see where you’re ranking and relay this information to clients so that they know you’re staying on top of the industry changes and doing what you can to position them optimally.