Digithoughts

Have you heard of Google Instant? It's their new Instant Search (you need to be logged in with a Google account to see, if you don't see it already). Google claims it won't affect rankings (and I believe them), but it will undoubtedly affect search marketing in some way, and many people in the SEO industry are rushing to find out how. 

One apparent thing that will change is search volume and (more specifically) volume on popular keywords. Each keystroke you type in the window is now an entire search query. This means as soon as you type in the first letter Google returns a full page search with the most popular keyword for that letter, all without hitting the enter key. (Typing in "W" returns a query for "weather" including your local weather forecast).

One other example is that searching for "whether" does a query for the corrected version of "weather."  If you really meant to do a search for "whether," then you have to click a link to let Google know that's what you meant.  It may seem like just a slight change there from how it used to work, but it will have an impact on sites getting traffic from mistyped search results.

Another thing I find interesting is that Adsense ads are displayed as well, even if only for a split second. Typing in "A" did a query for Amazon and returned a paid ad from Amazon.com.  However, I was searching for Apple and the Amazon search results (as well as the Adsense ad) were only displayed for a fraction of a second. This still counts as an ad impression and the advertiser will be charged.

The immediate impact on SEM of Google Instant is that the cost of these Adsense ads should decrease, but perhaps an even larger impact is that the value of those ads will decline as well. There is a lot of movement in the center portion of the screen as a user types, and the eyes of the user doing the search will most likely be fixated to that area (to see if the results being returned are relevant to their search).

This actually brings up another point. Because results are returned as they type, there might be a change in how people search.  Currently, most users perform a search, click on a handful of links (on the first two pages) and see if it's relevant to their search results.  If none of the results are what they are looking for, then they type in a new search.  The SEO impact of Google Instant might be that because they can see the results so quickly, then there is a chance that they will be more prone to tweak the search query before even clicking on the first link.  If this is the case, than sites with non-relevant content will see a decrease in traffic, while at the same time the sites generating clicks/views will see an increase in traffic quality (conversions, time on site, number of pages visited).

It will be interesting to see how this change affects the search community (as well as things like PPC), and how tools like Google’s keyword search volume tool will be updated. I suspect other search engines will have to make a similar change to their system, if only to keep up with what Google’s new monthly total of queries will be.

From a user experience perspective, there is no doubt that Google's vision is that mobile is the future and the need for an easy way to search on the move is a testament of this. 

Jonathan Dietz Software Engineer

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