Vurb Seeks to Challenge Google with Better Mobile Context

Subscription businesses may have one more thing to worry about in their SEO initiatives with Vurb, a four-year-old startup with high hopes for redefining

Subscription businesses may have one more thing to worry about in their SEO initiatives with Vurb, a four-year-old startup with high hopes for redefining the way we use mobile to search the web.

Founder Bobby Lo seeks to bridge the gap between search engines and mobile apps by presenting contextual answers to queries, uniting both the information of search and the functionality of apps.

Lo built Vurb around the “Vurb Card,” which in his own words is a “portable, interchangeable, and intelligent medium that connects you to information and relevant apps and services.” Cards can be shared with friends and stored together with other cards as “Vurb decks” for later use.

In practice, Vurb combines cohesive search, actionable information, and shareable formats. For instance, a search for a movie playing in theaters brings users to a Vurb Card with, according to TechCrunch , “details about the film, showtimes, recent news, cast and crew, video trailers, reviews, and options to deep-link to pages about the movie in other apps.” Once a show time is chosen, Vurb automatically connects to Fandango for tickets and suggests nearby restaurants, where users can read reviews, book a reservation through Open Table, and call a ride with Uber or Lyft.

Insider Take:

We love competition and especially like to see improvements in search so our customers (and potential customers) can find us. Does a service like Vurb mean that Google will eventually go away? It’s unlikely, though new technologies like Vurb, if implemented correctly, will ever so slightly chip away at the veneer. Search is ever evolving and changing the SEO rules to keep up with bad actors, spammers, low-quality content, and new technologies, Thus far the examples where Vurb shines are based on consumer situations, products and services.

We look forward to seeing how the service evolves for B2B, Education and other non-consumer focused subscription businesses. For SEO, whether it’s for Google or new services like Vurb, we recommend (and remind) subscription businesses to never use tricks to boost search rankings as you risk being penalized. Producing quality and unique content on your site is the best course of action no matter if you’re a SaaS business, online services provider, or a publisher with a subscription paywall.

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