The launch of Google’s job search func­tion­al­i­ty, which fol­lowed its for­ay into trav­el, might leave busi­ness­es in oth­er ver­ti­cals wor­ried their indus­tries are next – and how they could ever com­pete with the search giant.

But no mat­ter where Google goes next, it’s not doom and gloom – at least not for for­ward-think­ing play­ers will­ing to evolve.

In fact, accord­ing to Mar­cus Miller, head of SEO and PPC at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing firm Bowler Hat, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that, while pow­er­ful, even Google is not invin­ci­ble.

“You only have to look at Google Plus to know that every­thing Google touch­es does not turn to gold,” he said.

Indeed, point­ing to Google’s biggest flops of all time – which also include Google Video, Dodge­ball and Google Answers – Tom LaVec­chia, pres­i­dent of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing firm X Fac­tor Media, agreed that even though Google “has many, many wins, [it] con­stant­ly [exper­i­ments] and [fails] all the time”.

And it’s that will­ing­ness to exper­i­ment that is key to sur­vival for any busi­ness.

In a sim­i­lar vein, Miller con­ced­ed many small­er niche busi­ness­es have lost traf­fic to more advanced search engine func­tion­al­i­ty from Google.

“Con­sid­er the site whatismyip.com — I won­der how much traf­fic [it] lost when Google start­ed show­ing a user’s IP on the search engine result pages? Like­wise, online cal­cu­la­tors and the like. If your busi­ness is based on sim­ple answers that the search engine can deliv­er, then you are on shaky ground,” Miller said. “But recruit­ment? Trav­el? I am not sure Google can pro­vide all the answers here. Cer­tain­ly, the recruit­ment indus­try is built on rela­tion­ships and trust. A search engine or AI sys­tem can’t replace every­thing that human does in these indus­tries (yet at least). We live in dis­rup­tive times. Things are chang­ing. Rapid­ly. The busi­ness­es of tomor­row are the ones that will adapt to and ben­e­fit from the changes of today.”

Per David Erick­son, vice pres­i­dent of online mar­ket­ing at Kar­wos­ki & Courage Pub­lic Rela­tions, the most obvi­ous way brands can cap­i­tal­ize on Google’s job search func­tion­al­i­ty specif­i­cal­ly is to mark up job list­ing pages using its struc­tured data require­ments.

“That gives brands the chance to have their job post­ings list­ed direct­ly in search results rather than going through a third-par­ty employ­ment list­ings provider with the added ben­e­fit of col­lect­ing user behav­ior data direct­ly from the brand web­site,” Erick­son said.

But, on a broad­er lev­el, brands should think about Google’s role in their indus­tries and what Google knows over­all, which, in the case of trav­el, is quite a lot.

“Think about how con­sumers behave…: They research the places they plan to vis­it. They prob­a­bly email links to web­sites they’ve found as a result of that research. They find accom­mo­da­tions and plane tick­ets via search. Whether those clicks occurred via a Google Ad or the organ­ic list­ing, Google knows about it,” Erick­son said. “When they book their hotel and air­fare, they get a receipt emailed to them, prob­a­bly to a Gmail account and the pur­chase was like­ly tracked by Google Ana­lyt­ics. They like­ly get auto­mat­ic noti­fi­ca­tions of changes to their flight plans from the Google app and/or they may use Google voice via a mobile app or Google Home to check on their flight sta­tus.”

As a result, Google explic­it­ly under­stands the cus­tomer jour­ney and any bot­tle­necks with­in for a huge per­cent­age of trav­el­ers, which it can now exploit.

And, Erick­son observed, the same fun­da­men­tal dynam­ic holds true for con­sumers look­ing for jobs.

“They search for oppor­tu­ni­ties and email them­selves the research. Even if they are not using Google to search for jobs, they are like­ly get­ting job alerts emailed to them via LinkedIn or oth­er job list­ing sites,” he said. “If it’s in Gmail, Google will know how they inter­act with those list­ings. And then, if a con­ver­sa­tion with a recruiter or HR man­ag­er fol­lows, Google will know if a job offer was made and accept­ed or declined. These types of trans­ac­tions occur with­in Gmail on a mas­sive scale every day, so Google has the dataset to rec­og­nize pat­terns not just among job seek­ers, but among job seek­ers with­in spe­cif­ic indus­tries.”

As a result, Erick­son said the real ques­tion each busi­ness should ask is, “What does Google know about my indus­try?”

That in turn can help busi­ness­es bet­ter under­stand the cus­tomer jour­ney and asso­ci­at­ed bot­tle­necks – and iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties them­selves.

Or, as Brock Mur­ray, COO of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency seo­plus+, put it, this is anoth­er sign that web pres­ence opti­miza­tion is the imper­a­tive for busi­ness­es, not sim­ply web­site opti­miza­tion.

“Google has a mis­sion to help searchers com­plete the desired action with­in their plat­form, whether that is look­ing up store hours, book­ing an appoint­ment or even search­ing for jobs,” he added.