Google Instant – what does it mean for SEO & AdWords

I hear you ask, what is Google Instant.  In Google’s own words “Google Instant is search-before-you-type”. Instant predicts what the most likely phrase completions is for your search and shows results without the need to click the search button. This means a faster pretictive interactive search and allows you to scroll through the predictions and see the results instantly for the predicted search phrase. Give it a try www.google.com/instant.

How will this new dynamic, interactive, predictive search impact Search Engine Optimisation and AdWords?.   Google Instant shows  search results as soon as you start typing and the results will be different for each of the predictive phrases returned.  Does this mean that users will choose results based on shorter phrases? If so it is going to be much more difficult to optimise websites for the shorter phrases as there will be a lot more competition.  Will it mean more relevant traffic to your website because you will be able to access your desired results faster? Or will it have no impact at all?

As for AdWords, pausing for 3 seconds on any one list of results will mean an impression is counted.  Does this mean that we are going to see more impressions and lower click through rates and will we be paying more for our keywords? Or does it mean more relevant traffic?

The good news is that Google Instant is only being rolled at the moment to users on Google domains in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia and on the following browsers Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8.  Users on domains other than Google.com can only access it if they are signed in to a Google Account.  More domains and languages will be added in the coming months.

So there are still a lot of questions to be answered and we won’t know the true impact until people start using Google Instant and we see the results whether they are good or bad. 

Happy searching