Google Instant is a new search enhancement that displays results as users type their search query. Results are displayed much faster than before because users don’t have to finish typing their full search term, or even press ‘search’ to have the results displayed.
Google’s logic is that by seeing results as you type, you formulate a better search term that dynamically changes as the query is typed. Google calls this instant feedback. But the enhancement, if widely adopted will have major consequences for search engine marketers, brands and small companies alike.
Google Instant at present only works when people are logged in and will no doubt be rolled out to unlogged in users over time. Results are updated according to the most popular searches starting with the text that a user inputs.
As such if your website is ranking for that phrase, a user may see it before they have finished their search query – it is therefore important to grab users’ attention whilst the reports are updating and before a user may type more and potentially finish with a query that your website is not ranking for.
Meta descriptions, calls to action, title tags and microformats
The best way to achieve this is via good meta data in your pages, using meta descriptions and good call to action TITLE tags, as well as using the new microformats that are available which mark up your web content so that they are displayed in your search results.
To see what would be displayed once you have microformats enabled, there is also a handy testing tool called Rich Snippets.
A change in user behaviour?
As Google Instant takes off, in the long term the search giant no doubt hopes that that it will change ‘search’ as a user behaviour and further lock it down as the tool of choice for consumers. However this is not guaranteed. Other innovations in search have been rolled back when proved unpopular with users, such as Searchwiki which was quietly discontinued as a footnote to another search result roll out, Google Stars.
As such it is wise to take a wait and see approach to its uptake before totally committing resources and budget to updating your search strategy.
The pause factor
Assuming that Google Instant does take hold, one direct consequence will be the increase in impressions for paid search. This is because when users pause for more than three seconds as they type a query, a search impression is generated. These will register as an increase in your analytics reports and in the short term skew this data, especially if making monthly comparisons is (as it should be) part of your search strategy. Comparing next month’s paid search data to the same month last year will paint a very different picture.
It is advisable to annotate the time that Google Instant launches in analytics packages so that this skewing can be factored out.
The search long-tail
As already discussed, Google Instant offers suggestions for queries as people type. The results are actually returned by using the same underlying algorithm as Google Suggest, the feature which presents a range of related phrases in a drop down format when typing in the Google search box.
The algorithm returns results based on search term volume and trends to present the best guess on what people are looking for (before they know it themselves). This will start to affect the type of key-phrases people use. However, 25 per cent of search queries in Google are currently estimated to never have been searched before. This is known as the search long-tail and is one of the reasons why the business of search is so difficult and why Google puts so much resource in to serving up the appropriate results.
As a result of this exhaustive search term scenario Google has launched various tools to shorten the long-tail of search terms in an effort to herd users into using certain queries when looking for websites. For example a user may be looking for business travel insurance which includes specialised computer equipment. This might return various unrelated websites to do with computer repairs and family insurance. Herding the user to look for business travel insurance should present more relevant results suited to the user’s needs.
Google Instant turbo charges the herding process so that website owners now need to evaluate their keyword strategy to see if they are weighting their search terms towards the long-tail and if they are not ranking for the head term (business travel insurance) they may well be losing more traffic to a competitor.
This is a significant change and will generally favour big B2B brands, since they typically have more clout in ranking for the big terms. Google openly admits that at its heart is the ethos that brands are the way to sort through the “cesspool of the web” (Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, 2008).
It follows that any offline marketing activity (such as advertising in trade magazines) should consider a call to action that encourages people to type in your brand and head keyword as this will contribute to not only how well your website ranks but also how much ownership your company can take of the search terms that auto appear Google suggestion field.
In summary
Google Instant may not even be here in 12 months and may be written off as a failed experiment. If it does capture and change user behaviour, the long-tail of search terms will shorten. It follows that if you are getting traffic from long-tail phrases at the moment, you may want to look at optimising for more head terms and influence search behaviour in your offline marketing. You should also make your search results appear on Google as clickable and attractive as possible by using microformats and good calls to action in your meta descriptions and title tags.
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