We remember the first chat bots that were on websites. They looked strange and out of place. Then Zendesk came along and made it all seem so beautiful. Boldchat and other chat technologies that weren’t that interesting have been trumped by newer smarter AI and CRM integration offerings like Drift.com.

While they don’t help nor hinder the online optimization process, they do help engage users and while remarketing was always SEO best friends for keeping those newly found users coming back to a site, the conversational applications now have users ready to use them (client and customer).

This month Microsoft acquired Semantic Machines to build upon new approaches to building conversational Artificial Intelligence technology for language interfaces that can better handle natural language interactions.

So we are just at the beginning of the generation where technology is starting to help people more based on their requests. Kind of makes you want to scream for joy right!

The rush of keyword based content on page (in body copy, page headings, footer links) in the past 10 years led to Google’s Penguin/Panda algorithm updates. Content marketers have embraced long form content genres and now we move to Content Recommendations Engines like Taboola, Outbrain, Zergnet, etc. You’ve seen these native advertising units ( a 2 column by 3 rows of text links with strange, intriguing and very clickable images). They are on most large publisher websites below the roll. So as Google Cost Per Click rises and clients demand greater content reach and distribution, the use of Content Recommendations Engines is a big challenge for clients… fortunately, we know the folks at these CREs.