Craft Focus - Oct/Nov (Issue 63)

64 craft focus Intelligent Retail’s David Fairhurst discusses the ever-developing world of intelligent speakers and search engines and its effect on online marketing As an avid Science Fiction fan, I often marvel at how modern innovations often mirror or even surpass the other worldly technology showcased in my favourite movies and television shows. Who thought when Star Trek was first aired in early 1966 that hand-held communicators, speaking computers and particle weapons would become a reality just a few short decades later? The fact is, technology is pushing forward so fast that if you’re tasked with promoting a retail website you really do have to run to keep up. Which brings me round to the rise of artificial intelligence and the increasingly ubiquitous intelligent speaker, something that Star Trek did very well… INTELLIGENT SPEAKERS Devices like Google Home and Amazon Echo are now being joined by many other third party ‘intelligent speakers’ – many of which are tied into the collected knowledge contained in search engine databases as well as news services, other smart devices and online retailers. Intelligent Speakers, just like the virtual assistants embedded into Microsoft, Apple and Google operating systems make use of Natural Language Processing (NLP), the use of which is only possible because of advances in Artificial Intelligence and Neural Network processing over the past decades. Neural Networking and NLP allow computer systems to learn and respond to us in much the same way a Human does, giving an approximation of intelligence. It’s all very sci-fi, but what does this have to do with online marketing? NLP AND SEARCH RESULTS Natural Language Processing does introduce particular challenges to those promoting websites, in that we’re now presented with an ever-increasing range of potential search queries via a spoken interface. Modern devices with access to distributed AI powered by Neural Networks allow us to express ourselves to our computers and home devices like smart TVs, games consoles and the relatively new intelligent speakers in a way previously only available in the realms of science fiction. All of this is only possible because the wonders of our modern, faster internet connections. Google has stated that 15 per cent of all search queries on its search engine have never been seen before. This is increasingly a consequence of the flexibility allowed by naturally-spoken search via Intelligent Speakers and Virtual Assistants embedded on devices such as TVs, games consoles, computers, smartphones, and of course intelligent speakers. THE RIGHT QUESTION? Normally, before any online marketing campaign can take place, baseline targets need to be established. Normally, questions such as ‘what key phrases are we targeting for a particular website?’ and ‘what are the likely returns for those key phrases for the top positions in search engine results?’ need to be asked. These kinds of questions become much more difficult to answer in the world of rise of artificial intelligence