Google revealed that it wants to start going to people’s places of business, and watch them work. It says it wants to learn about how it can help you manage your sites easier.
Google’s Gary Illyes talked about it in a Google+ update (via Search Engine Land).
“We are looking for companies, agencies, and website owners willing to let us observe for a couple days (at most) how they are managing their sites’ content and infrastructure,” he said. “We would meet with & observe the developers, designers, content creators, SEOs, and decision makers, we would take notes and ask questions. If your site is managed by an agency, we want to hear about that, too! All this to create internal reports that we’ll use for improving our communication, support, and web-search related products like Webmaster Tools.”
“This is for everyone! It doesn’t matter if your site is huge or small, we’re interested in all kind of sites,” he adds.
Actually, it’s not quite for everyone. It’s for businesses in Europe and North Africa. These are the places Google is willing to cover with this initiative at its own cost, at least for now.
At the end of its visits, Illyes says, Google will be happy to try and answer questions “within reason”.
I guess that means you can’t expect them to give you any inside information about the algorithm. I wonder if you really have to wait until the end of two days to ask questions at your own business.
Image via Google+