As soon as OpenAI announced its ChatGPT tool and made it widely available to the public, other technology companies scrambled to keep up with these capabilities. Google remains the go-to search engine for people all over the world, and the company wants to remain competitive and cutting-edge in its development and integration of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and technologies. In May of 2024, Google held its annual “Innovation in the Open” (also known as I/O) keynote address that announced the latest updates. As you would expect, AI tools and technologies took center stage, as presenters highlighted the company’s investments in the online user experience. Prominent features include the planned use and integration of AI tools with multi-step reasoning, lens search with video, and AI-organized search results. Ultimately, Google used the I/O keynote to cement its goal of leading the way in the current and future AI landscape. If your small to mid-sized law firm is hoping to grow your practice and engage with more potential clients, it’s worth taking some time to understand how Google’s recent announcements stand to impact your digital marketing efforts. Additionally, you can enlist the guidance of a dedicated and knowledgeable digital marketing professional who specializes in serving the unique needs and challenges of small and boutique law firms. Let’s take a look at how Google’s May 2024 I/O updates may affect your law firm’s approach to developing and implementing an effective content marketing strategy.
Google I/O 2024’s Most Significant Announcements
First, it’s important to understand that Google revealed a staggering amount of new and improved technologies, programs, services, capabilities, tools, and goals during its most recent I/O keynote. To give you an idea of the sheer volume of these announcements, Google put together a post entitled “100 things we announced at I/O 2024,”—and this list does not cover every detail that was presented during the two-day conference. So, what were the most important launch announcements that individuals, businesses, and the public as a whole should understand? In a truly meta moment, Google’s AI generative tool, Gemini, created a summary of the I/O conference and identified the most noteworthy takeaways. Let’s take a look at what Gemini finds to be the most important announcements coming out of this most recent keynote.
Gemini Nano Can Improve Efficiency
Google currently equips its Pixel 8 Pro phones with Gemini Nano, a streamlined version of its large language model Gemini. With this built-in AI model, Pixel 8 Pro users can move through certain tasks with greater efficiency. For instance, a user can use the phone’s Recorder app to take “recorded conversations, interviews, presentations, lectures—any speech, really—and build a digestible summary of the main points.” Impressively, Gemini Nano can accomplish this feat without the need for an internet connection. Gemini Nano also enables users to use the Magic Compose feature in Google Messages to transform their written content into different styles (again, without the need for an internet connection). As Google moves forward, it intends to integrate Gemini Nano into the Chrome browser to “significantly enhance web browsing experiences by offering advanced capabilities like real-time translation, content summarization, and code generation directly within the browser.”
AI Organized Search Results
Google also announced its intention to implement AI technology in order to group and organize search results in more targeted and purposeful ways. For instance, Google’s search algorithm will incorporate more enhanced AI tools in order to provide searchers with different options and ideas based on their search queries. The goal is to roll out this capability within the coming months, starting with searches involving dining and recipes. From there, Google plans on expanding AI-organized search results to queries and topics involving movies, music, books, shopping, hotels, and other services. As you focus on improving your content marketing for law firms strategy, it’s worth considering how this forthcoming capability may affect your approach to connecting with potential clients and remaining visible (and relevant) to AI-powered search engines.
Lens Searches With Video Capabilities
Another revolutionary announcement that was unveiled during Google’s May 2024 I/O keynote pertains to lens search with video capabilities. Essentially, this newly announced feature aims to allow users to record a video and submit a question based on the recorded video. Google’s AI-powered search capabilities will analyze and interpret the video content and generate results in response to the user’s question. In practice, this could mean that a potential client could record a video involving a potential legal question and submit it to Google’s search engine. As long as your law firm’s digital marketing strategy draws upon the most up-to-date SEO best practices for legal marketing, you can maximize your chances of remaining visible and relevant to the search algorithm (meaning that Google may be more likely to use your online content to generate responses and direct traffic to your website).
What Law Firms Can Expect in the Coming Months
So, what do all these new AI-generated capabilities mean for businesses? Smaller law firms often handle their own content marketing strategies, so it’s essential to keep up with the latest SEO best practices and other tools that keep your law practice as relevant and visible as possible to potential clients in your area. Generally speaking, you can expect that search queries will likely evolve from written questions to more conversational, topic-focused questions (i.e., they will become less formal). In anticipation of this shift, it’s worth tailoring your marketing content to embrace a more conversational tone that incorporates informal word choices and more relaxed phrases. Additionally, the integration of AI technology dramatically expands the modes in which users can input search questions, so adapting your legal marketing strategy to embrace a broader range of media (text, video, images, audio, etc.) can help you remain in step with the multi-modal, interactive approach that’s on the horizon.
The dedicated team of legal marketing professionals at LegalRev is here to help you make sense of the latest updates and implications of the digital marketing landscape. If you are interested in taking your law firm’s content marketing efforts to the next level, give us a call today at (800) 893-2590 to get started.
