Are Interior Designers the Future of SEO?

At its core, Google is a search company. Arguably, everything they do eventually links back to search. They created Google Plus not simply to be their version of Facebook, but as a way to make search more social. They created Google maps to make search more local. And I suspect they created Google Glass to make search more physical.

We know that once Google Glass gains steam, Google is going to start applying more and more advanced search and discovery algorithms to it. But what kind of algorithms? On the web, Google has created algorithms that reward sites that making it easier to navigate and find what you’re looking for. So it stands to reason that Google will do the same for physical spaces, especially retail ones.

That means that Google Glass has the potential to start shaping the built environment around us the same way as it has shaped the way sites are built on the web.

Google may reward you for organizing your store in a logical way that’s easy for users to navigate in the physical world. If user data collected from Google Glass indicates that you consistently fail to keep shelves well stocked, Google could penalize you in search. Elaborate end caps could be come the spam of the 21st century.

And all this puts the future of search into the hands of interior designers and architects. They could well be the SEO practitioners of the future, designing buildings that are easier to navigate, laying out stores that are easier to search, and reminding store managers to keep shelves stocked.

Forget metadata and low page load speeds—store shelves and grocery isles are the SEO battleground of the future.