Instant search has arrived

If you go to Google right now you might notice that your search results start appearing as you type.  This is Google’s new Instant Search in operation.

This is a massive change for Google because now your search is refined each time you type in a letter and this has a big effects both positive and negative.

I give a big hats off to Google because once again they have put their users first – this is extremely useful for ordinary people.  Let’s look at an example:

• wal – might lead to walls, wallis, wallpaper, wales
• walk – might lead to walkway, walkers, walking, walk scotland
• walking – walking boots, walking upright, walking along
• walking vacations… and so on

Each letter you type gives you a lovely range of choice.

But for website owners – this is a headache and a half.  Google have done their homework, traditionally I have recommended that for both Paid Search and SEO – three word keywords, or precise phrasing lead to far better results.

That still holds true, if someone is after ‘walking vacation France’ we can provide a precise advert for that.  But the big question is will users ‘get’ to three words.  Will they stop after entering just a few letters of the second word.

Now you see some of the questioning that makes up the proposition for marketing your website.  The long and short of this will be:

1. More expensive Paid Search – Google will profit because advertisers will compete on shorter key phrases thus creating competition
2. More expensive Paid Search because listing will appear more often (even though they won’t be clicked on as they only appear a short time), the frequency of adverts show will go up, but the clicks down, as people miss them, this will lead to lower quality scores for keywords and therefore make it more expensive to maintain ranking.
3. More emphasis on SEO – now if your website is about ‘sailing’ it is more important than ever to get ranked highly for that single word… SEO matters more than ever.