Finally it’s landed! After much speculation it was announced yesterday that Google Instant was going to be launched today and true to their word here it is.
Users of Google will today be able to see search results display as they type their queries. This search-before-you-type feature as Google have dubbed it gives users the most likely search results given what you have already typed.
Google say that there are many benefits of Google Instant with the primary one being a time saver allowing users to save between two to five seconds per search. Google also go on to say that they estimate that they will save users 11 hours with each passing second!
However all time saving and fancy technology aside what does this mean for search marketers?
PPC
When this feature first hit the news it caused a lot of stir for paid advertisers. If people can see results as they type surely this will increase the number of impressions received which will in turn affect the overall click-through rate (CTR). Well Google have in a way nullified this fear by stating that an impression is only counted if a user takes action to choose a query which involves either hitting the Enter key, clicking the search button, clicking a link in the results page, or if a user stop typing for three seconds or more.
However Google do still stress that the new feature may increase or decrease your overall impressions, so based on that we can safely say that “yes” it is going to affect impressions and overall CTR so it worth paying close attention to this.
Google do go on to say however that Google Instant can improve the quality of your clicks as it helps user’s type queries that are more directly connected with the answers they need which give them their due can potentially be a good thing.
SEO
Google Instant is probably more concerning for SEO than PPC as this change is most likely going to have an affect on keyword referral data. For example if I want to search for BBC all I have to do if type “B” and I have my result. Does this mean that the highest traffic driving keyword it now going to be B?
Google Instant will also surely affect long-tail traffic. For many businesses tapping into informational long-tail traffic is important however with Google Instant users may never reach these long-tail results. For example a user typing a query may find a result from another site before they finish typing said query. Granted it may mean that a shift in keyword strategy is required however regardless of this their will still be a possible decline in traffic off the back of this which some sites ultimately rely on.
At the moment I am still unsure about this change. Google have always positioned itself as a no thrills search engine where its results do the talking, however this change is totally the opposite and smacks of a needless attempt to differentiate itself from its rivals when it didn’t really need to.
If this does stick around then I guess with time we may grow to love it but for the time being I am not so sure.