How Apple can shift consumer search from Algorithmic to Apps

Apple’s hiring of Amazon’s William Stasior is big news. Stasior ran Amazon’s A9, the search and advertising unit for Amazon. Now he’ll be running the Apple’s Siri team, its voice-search / assistant product.

What might this signal from Apple? The obvious is its doubling-down on search and taking on Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter in the process.

Search is such a strong action-intent process, which is what makes it so valuable to advertisers, retailers, publishers – anyone looking to capture consumer attention. When searching, consumers are looking to learn (driving significant traffic to media sites), do (local search is critical for restaurants and bars) or buy. Google has been the starting point for most desktop searches for at least a decade. But now this starting point is shifting:

• AMZN now commands a third of online searches for products and is growing 73% YOY.
• Social Media (Facebook, Twitter) in some markets is driving almost 25% of news traffic
• Yelp is second only to Google for local search, with FourSquare and others entering the local search market  

Apple could begin to expand the footprint of its search with a very differentiated offer: it can provide incredibly relevant and deep vertical category search. Recipes, restaurants, photography, automobiles – anything. How? Via its App Store.

By last count, Apple’s App Store has over 650,000 apps, in every category imaginable. Integrating Siri across all of those apps to return search results in a way that isn’t solely algorithmic. Apps can be deeply category specific, powered by careful human curation (like astronomy app StarMap) or extensive crowd-sourcing (like Yelp).

Two critical implications:

• Significant threat to any existing search provider. For example, Siri can provide a direct entry point to retailer apps for product search rather than Amazon. The installed base of iPhone, and the greater ability to monetize iPhone users (higher income, higher likelihood to purchase) makes a particularly acute threat. 
• Radically new media, advertising and lead generation landscape. Though the battle between native mobile apps and mobile HTML5 experiences is early, the consumer is currently voting for apps. SEO falls apart when Apple is using voice initiated search threaded across its app ecosystem. Advertisers have an entirely new medium and set of relationships to develop – with app makers. Retailers will need to invest more in getting their app installed by fickle consumers more than ever, as well as partner with relevant category apps leaders to ensure they capture their fair share of intent-driven search consumers.