Editorial Articles

Listening to Radio1 the other day, there were a lot of the general public saying that Google Instant wasn't that big of a deal and that it wouldn't save them a lot of time. Whether it saves time or not (which it will) it's the fact that it will fundamentally change the way people search that is more important.

Unless you have experienced Google Instant yet (it'll be out next week UK wide), and for an extended period of time, the full power of it is hard to judge. There are two fundamental things to discuss about Google Instant:

Narrowing of a search is faster
As you type, more possibilities occur about how you could narrow your search. Due to the fact that the results come up so quickly, it takes very little time for someone to decide whether or not the results that have appeared are relevant or even close to before continuing to type to narrow their search criteria.

What is crucial to understand about this is that users do not lose momentum. In the old model of searching, you had to type, click search and then process the results before possibly trying again. In the new model using Google Instant, you do not have those breaks of interaction; it flows much faster without loss of momentum.

This has two major effects:
 

• People will get to longer less popular search terms faster (i.e. the long tail) and so your attention to your long tail terms in the realm of both SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and PPC (Pay Per Click) is crucial.
• People will be more led by Google’s suggestions. As changing your search is so fast and getting back to where you were easy, people will be more willing to check out one of Google’s suggestions than ever before.

Page 1 becomes even more important
Searchers will now be much more likely to narrow their search than to click for page 2 of the results. This means that unless your SEO work is resulting in page 1 listings, you’re less likely than ever before for that term to yield significant traffic. This could be taken further as people may use the top of page 1 as a judging criteria for the rest of the results as well.

Momentum and speed
One of Google’s primary marketing reasons for Instant is that it will save people time. Over the long term, this is probably the case. Marketers need to realise that Google Instant will be a slow usage shift that will happen over time – the changes to people’s statistics and results will probably not be as instant as the product.

As people get used to using the Instant functionality, of backtracking and redirecting their query, they will start to really harness the power of this innovation, but this will take time.

Some key points to take away are:
 

• Continue to invest time into your long tail terms
• Realise that your PPC ads and/or SEO descriptions need to be all the more clear as people will look at them for less time than ever before
• Take note of what Google’s suggested terms are when you are typing terms that you believe should lead to your site – these could lead to new opportunities

Make no mistake, Google Instant is a game changing innovation, and expect the other major search engines to be scratching their heads about how they can now catch up. The ‘real time web’ inched a lot closer to reality this week.

Rob Smith
Digital Director, Blueleaf