Google Instant – The Death of SEO?
When Google CEO Eric Schmidt Tweeted “I predict big things happening today at Google. We’re already fast.. fast is about to get faster.” it was clear that something big was on the horizon. Following that, Google held a high profile press conference in San Francisco to announce ‘Instant Search’, a significant change to the way Google handles queries and the latest of their search innovations. They explained that while users type relatively slowly, they can scan text relatively quickly and that as a result ‘Instant’ search should lead to a faster user experience, certainly with more organic impressions, and potentially with more PPC impressions.
“Google Instant” is now live for visitors to Google.com who are in the U.S. and is also live for users who are logged into a Google Account in a few other countries, including the UK. Search results appear as a user types, updating in real time to match the query based on each additional letter. As the results change, the search suggestions recommended by Google are also updated, channelling users towards a set of suggested keywords. Together, these features could have a significant impact on advertisers, who will see a shift in user behaviour as a result of users becoming accustomed to this new way of searching.
For now, this will have no effect on Google search partner sites, mobile searches or browser toolbar searches for the moment, which make up a reasonable amount of searches. Chitika, a web analytics company estimates that 9% of all searches are completed through the default Firefox toolbar and custom Google homepage, which is not currently affected. Google has said that mobile searches will have Google Instant in the future, and a successful rollout would probably mean that more searches will be included in Google Instant going forward.
A major change in the way an ‘impression’ is counted will have some impact on figures reported by Google Webmaster Tools and Google AdWords. Traditionally, an impression is incurred each time a user clicks on a suggested search option or presses return. With Google Instant, impressions are also accrued when a user pauses on a set of results for three or more seconds, or clicks on a result as they appear while a user types.
In considering how Google Instant will play out, it is worth noting that Google doesn’t always get it right. When Google recently promoted their homepage backgrounds, such was the underestimation of the dislike for the new ‘feature’ that Google was not prepared for the backlash of disgruntled users. Not only this, but other products and services have failed to deliver, notably in the social arena where ‘Google Wave’ and ‘Google Buzz’ were not well received by the online community. So it may be that this radical change may not be so well received, and may not be a permanent feature.
Of course, there is a way to disable ‘instant’ search, by using the prominent drop down menu to the right of the main search box, and it remains to be seen how many users will disable this feature.
How to switch Google Instant off
Below is an image of the drop down box to the right of the main search box, select ‘Off (Press Enter to Search)’ to disable Google Instant.
How will this impact your SEO campaign?
Also, if you have a rounded SEO strategy working in tune with a believable brand, this may not be a bad thing at all, as higher quality results should surface due to a higher accuracy and a more relevant search experience. However, as results change strategies will need to be reviewed to ensure meeting up to the minute best practice. For example, keyword research will need to include consideration of Instant.
This should in theory reduce the number of impressions from repeated queries as users can now adjust their query readily without clicking through results, reducing or increasing the number of visits from short and long tail queries depending on how specific the results are from any given query.
How about PPC?
PPC Will certainly be affected by this update, as users can scan more results without clicking, and three second results, where ads are shown before a query is completed will increase impressions for Ads.
Keyword research should now include consideration for shortened versions of queries, including negative keywords for words which have different meanings in shortened versions.
So potentially higher impressions to be had but from a potentially reduced set of keywords as users are channelled to their goal by more relevant results. Remember also that this is from the same group of users, so the Cost Per Click (CPC) price also looks set to increase as a result of these changes.
Oh, and in case you are wondering – For now, SEO is not dead 
Tags: best practice, Google, keywords, search, SEO
