Last Updated on 17/10/2021 by Hrithik V
Will the long-held deal between Google and Apple come to an end is a question in the minds of many people. This question is based on the ground of the Apple bots which have increased their crawling world wide web.
Google pays billions of dollars to Apple to act as by default search engine in Safari. The deal between both technology giants ensures that Google is the default search engine on Safari unless the user changes it in the preference.
Google never misses a chance to be on any platform, because “What can be better than selling search ads”?
Search ads are expensive for businesses and google having its dominant position (More than 93% of search traffic) leads the market and gets the whooping in its share.
Bing was developed by Microsoft for the same but it didn’t get much traction until Microsoft launched it’s browser edge and pushed Bing and default search engine.
Coming back to the story, The deal between Apple and Google is coming to an end soon. Reuters reported in July 2020 that the UK competition and markets authority is aiming this deal.
If an action taken by the UK Regulators then there might be a ripple effect from the European Union having a past of going against Google. Regulators might try to force Apple to remove Google as the default browser for Safari and instead let the user choose what is his preference.
Why there are chances of Apple launching a search engine?
Apple doesn’t need Google’s money?
Apple being the most valuable company in the world, might want the money Google gives them, but they don’t need it. Also, why to get a penny if they can have their own search. After all, webmasters and business owners aren’t happy for google’s unethical data theft practices.
Apple investing in search and pouring resources
Apple has been posting jobs for Search engineers on their website which are specialized in AI, ML, NLP which strengthens the clue.
iOS and iPadOS 14 beta bypasses Google Search with Spotlight Search
It is unclear if Apple stopped using Bing as the results are labeled as just Siri’s suggestions. Apple is now returning the search results within the Spotlight search, thereby completely surpassing Google.
Apple recently updated its Applebot web crawler page
In July 2020 Apple has launched a recent update to its About Applebot support page. The additions in the update were very similar to the details which are provided under webmasters and SEOs.
The changes which Apple made in the support page are:
- Added how to verify traffic from Applebot
- Expanded details on the Applebot user agent, including differences between its desktop and mobile version
- Expanded robots.txt rules
- Added a section stating that they don’t just crawl HTML, but also render pages similar to Google
- Added a section on search rankings and the factors that affect how it ranks web search results
Apart from these Apple bots have been seen continuously crawling websites which were caught many of the developers. All these points towards the new search engine with Apple branding might come up very soon.
What does this mean for SEOs?
If Apple launches a new search engine and captures a significant market share, then it will force SEOs to adapt and optimize accordingly. This might also be helpful as SEOs might get chances to test the possibilities which were unexplored with Google or other search engines.
