Google Inc. announced yesterday that today it will begin factoring Android app indexing into how it ranks businesses in its natural search results. Which likely is not welcome news for the majority of retailers, who have yet to index their Android or Apple iOS apps, says Brian Klais, founder and CEO of Pure Oxygen Labs LLC, a mobile marketing and mobile SEO consulting firm. Google cannot crawl the Apple App Store, so iPhone and iPad apps are not affected, though retailers do need to index those apps to enable deep linking, which is at the core of this new change to Google’s algorithm.
To index an app, a retailer or other business codes each page within an app, giving it a URL address (for example, RetailerApp://hardware/snowblower/productnumber) that search engines, digital ads and marketing e-mails can detect, thus enabling deep linking. Deep linking sends consumers from a web environment (Google.com, for example) into an app environment, which Google and just about everybody else have concluded offers a far superior customer experience on mobile devices. That is why Google now raises retailers with indexed apps above retailers without indexed apps, because Google wants to send its customers—searchers—to the best possible destinations.
“App indexation is an opportunity any retailer with an Android app can take advantage of to fuel more app engagement and sales from mobile search and other mobile channels,” Klais says. “Having said that, the opportunity only benefits two groups right now: brands with Android apps and Android users. Since Google and Android are integrated, the search results can intelligently show searchers indexed app content along with deep links to open any app installed on a user’s mobile device straight from the search results. Google is basically building an ecosystem benefit around their core strength, search, to woo more app developers and users. It’s a brilliant move.”
But retailers with Android apps have work to do to comply and rise to the top, Klais adds.
“We studied retailers in the Internet Retailer Mobile 500 last summer and found most with Android apps have no deep link support,” Klais says. “Adding deep link support on a large scale can be complex, requiring app developer assistance and technical SEO forethought. The process involves declaring URLs an app should respond to when a user requests any of those URLs from search listings. There are various configuration options and decisions to make. Once URL targeting logic is defined in an app’s manifest xml file, searchers who click those search listings will see their apps open automatically when they click the search results.”
With Google now pushing app indexing and deep linking, retailers that respond can observe the benefits in the search sphere, which then could lead them to explore deep linking in other digital realms, potentially fueling more customer engagement with Android apps from e-mail marketing, display advertising, social media and web sites. Readers who have the Etsy app installed on their Android devices can search for an Etsy listing on Google, click the search listing, and see how deep linking works.
“Retailers with experience with m-dot mobile commerce sites will find the whole app indexing process similar to a mobile SEO requirement for m-dot sites: adding ‘alternate’ relationship links to their desktop page HTML code or sitemap,” Klais explains. “These links, or tags, show Google the relationship between a web page and an app ‘page’ so Google knows when to display indexed app content to app users.”
For retailers with limited resources, Klais suggests stepping into app indexing by defining deep link support for just the home page of the app or other top-level app pages. It’s not ideal, but deep linking search results—and e-mail, social media, etc.—to an app home page will at minimum get searchers into an app. Even if it’s just the home page and not a more relevant page within the app, shoppers will find themselves in the better shopping experience, which ultimately will benefit them and the retailer, Klais says. “Retailers with limited resources then can monitor what happens to Android app engagement levels and the business case likely will make itself to invest further in deep link support and app indexation,” he says.
Follow Bill Siwicki, editor of the 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500 and editor,mobile, at Internet Retailer, at @IRmcommerce and at @MobileInsiderBS.