Why Does Google Pathways Matter for SEO?

Google recently said that the company is building a new architecture that makes it possible for AI models to multi-task. The architecture, Pathways, could have a significant impact on how businesses make themselves findable in Google Search. 

What Is Google Pathways, and Why Does It Matter? 

Pathways is an architecture that works behind the scenes to help AI applications learn multiple tasks. For example, with Pathways, an AI model can understand text, images and speech together. Thus, the AI model can think more like human beings do – learning many tasks at a time rather than sequentially. As Google noted in a blog post, “Today's AI models are typically trained to do only one thing. Pathways will enable us to train a single model to do thousands or millions of things.” The post elaborated: 

Pathways could enable multimodal models that encompass vision, auditory, and language understanding simultaneously. So whether the model is processing the word “leopard,” the sound of someone saying “leopard,” or a video of a leopard running, the same response is activated internally: the concept of a leopard. The result is a model that’s more insightful and less prone to mistakes and biases. 

And of course an AI model needn’t be restricted to these familiar senses; Pathways could handle more abstract forms of data, helping find useful patterns that have eluded human scientists in complex systems such as climate dynamics. 

Google Pathways matters for many reasons. The author of the blog post, Jeff Dean, said at a recent TED conference, “[w]e’ll be able to engineer better medicines by infusing these models with knowledge of chemistry and physics; we’ll be able to advance educational systems by providing more individualized tutoring; we’ll be able to tackle really complicated issues like climate change, perhaps engineering of clean energy solutions.” 

Pathways may also have a profound impact on Google Search, which is powered by AI. Pathways could make Google Search comprehend multiple sources of data about any topic that people search for and return a richer set of results. In addition, Pathways will likely make Google Search more useful and accurate for the different ways people search: text queries, voice, and visual search. Google was already headed in this direction with the use of Multitask Unified Model (MUM) technology, which makes it possible for Google to return more thorough answers to a range of search queries and types (including visual search). Although we’re still in the early days, Pathways looks like a more powerful way for Google Search to harness technologies such as MUM.  

According to Seth Nickerson, vice president of SEO for Investis Digital, “With Pathways, we expect brands that publish the most diverse content formats -- text, images, video and rich, tagged data -- will see the most benefit. These sites should see their content surfaced when people make a broader set of search queries with a wider context.” 

What Pathways Could Mean to Content 

With Pathways, Google Search will be able to do deeper searches across a site’s content to find answers to queries – and this includes images, video, text-based, and aural content. It also means that Schema mark-up will become more valuable. Schema is a markup system and form of code that webmasters place on their websites (via HTML) to make it easier for search engines to understand its contents. A site that uses Schema (also known as Schema.org) can improve the way search engines read and represent their content in search engine results pages (SERPs) with rich snippets. 

Schema is also a critical component of voice search. Because Pathways is AI-driven, having stronger support for voice search could result in brand content earning visibility for a broader array of searches. Seth Nickerson also noted, because Google Pathways deploys machine learning, search results theoretically should improve over time. As Google's understanding of context around specific topics improves, voice search could become more widely adopted.” 

Google Pathways will also make visual content more important as MUM has already. Being able to analyze a vaster set of images and video (by multitasking better with Pathways) will help Google Search turn up search results that contain visual content – including, of course, content on a brand’s website.  

What Brands Should Do 

• If you are not using Schema, get started. Schema already improves your site’s SEO. Pathways will make this more so. Here’s a blog post from HubSpot that shares more insight into Schema’s value to SEO. 

• Level up your visual content. For starters,  do an SEO audit to understand how well your business incorporates visual content – ranging from your website to your socials. Read our recent blog post on Google visual search for more context. 

• Stay abreast of more developments from Google. One good way to do that is to follow Google’s blog.  

Contact Investis Digital 

Investis Digital creates Connected Content™ that builds powerful digital connections between you and your audiences. We do this by uniting compelling communications, intelligent digital experiences and performance marketing. As part of our approach, our paid and organic search teams help clients create content that is well optimized for search. Learn more about our SEO expertise here. Contact us to learn more.