The past few days Google have been teasing us with various new animated logos and claiming that something big is coming, leaving the search industry waiting with bated breath. Would it really be something original and big, or rather would it be another Google Wave style failure? Yesterday they finally revealed Google Instant which immediately caused quite a stir. In their own words…

“Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.”

Google Instant has more than likely come about because of the rise of social networking and social media. Rather than searching for information, suddenly content is coming right at us, without us even asking for it, as Google Instant reflects. We are now spending less and less time searching for things and more and more time sitting back and letting it wash over us. This over-consumption of information is hard to avoid and Google have recognised this trend and alas Google instant has been born, to feed us with more content before we have fully searched for it!

Whilst there’s no doubt that this is a big technological achievement, dramatically increasing the number of searches being performed worldwide, what impact will it have on SEO and PPC?

Some, such as Steve Rubel, director of insights for Edelman Digital, have been quick to claim that Google Instant kills SEO, whilst technology journalist Milo Yiannopoulos from the Telegraph is less than impressed, claiming “Autocomplete… Wow”.

So what impact could this have? There’s a lot of speculation and some of the key points I feel are discussed below:

• For SEO purposes long-tail search terms could suffer as Instant suggestions could work in favour of massive sites that rank well for generic terms. For example, if a searcher was looking for “holidays in Cyprus”, they might be tempted to click a result as soon as results for “holidays” are displayed by one of the big operators, rather than completing their search query and instead finding a smaller specialist site

• Alternatively, it could go the other way, with searchers now being presented with longer-tail search terms they previously hadn’t considered. Also, searchers often have a clear idea of what they’re searching for and how they plan to find it and it’s not clear how much Instant will distract them from this

• As for Adwords, this could mean a change in bidding strategy, with generic terms now becoming more attractive to advertisers in search of even more traffic. For example, if someone’s looking for “running shoes” then it could be wise to bid on “running” and try and capture them early on in their search journey. In the past such generic terms may have converted poorly but now if the searcher’s intent is to find “running shoes” you could pre-empt this and save them typing their full query by bidding on “running”, potentially increasing conversion rates on terms which may not necessarily have converted well in the past

• Also, if there’s a 3 second pause then this counts as an impression although the searcher hasn’t necessarily finished their search or maybe even acknowledged the paid ads shown. If this happens then AdWords impressions will soar, CTRs will plummet and the knock on effect is a poorer quality score meaning increased costs!

Is Google Instant really the end of the world of search as we know it?

No, but now more than ever it’s important to understand your customers, how they search and what motivates them both in the world according to Instant and “Proper” Google.