“Contextual Discovery” is a new Google search term coined by Google VP of Local Places Marissa Meyer.   Essentially, contextual discovery refers to utilizing a individual’s location across a number of Google products, including Places, Latitude, Google Maps and Google Earth to provide relevant results.

In a recent interview, Meyer stressed the future importance that local will have on all of Google search: “The idea is to push information to people. It’s location in context. Inside the browser and a toolbar, can we look at where people have been going on the web — then we deliver it. But it’s a big UI challenge. In the browser it might be a panel on the right or bottom that complements your browsing. On the mobile phone, it’s where you are in the physical world. We can figure out where the next most useful information is. In a restaurant maybe it’s a menu. Or maybe it’s a social menu. It’s about explicit and implicit location.”

The recent integration of Google Place results into the mainframe of organic results already underscores the fact that the way results are served is evolving, and it’s happening at a rapid rate.  As contextual discovery becomes more important, keyword related searches could start to lose importance (as would standardized keyword-based SEO tactics).

For example, if you are looking for bars in Union Square of San Francisco, instead of typing ‘Union Square San Francisco Bars’ into a Google search box, you might already be served results based on the fact that you are standing in Union Square.  Much like how Adsense serves contextual ads based on what sites you are on, Google’s contextual discovery algorithm will serve ads based on your location and other relevant queues.

In the case of San Francisco Union Square bars, the SEO tactics to optimize a website for contextual discovery might be quite different than keyword related title tags, content, etc.  Geographic and social queues might start to be weighed more heavily and would become all the more important for local and small business search engine optimization.