Yesterday, Google unveiled its instant search feature which essentially shows immediate results when you start typing. It will take a couple of weeks to understand the impact of this delivery system on web site traffic. No matter whether you get most of your Google visitors from natural search results or paid advertising, the nature of the instant search feature means that users are going to behave somewhat differently. While instant results don’t qualify as an algorithm change, the fact that Google serves up around 75% of US search results is going to mean that Instant Search is going to make a splash.
The first thing you might notice about instant search is that results shuffle themselves around as you add words and phrases to your search query. (To learn more, we have a visual example below that you can click on to see the full-sized image.) You get suggestions for your search, which occupy a part of the visual real estate which would normally have shown more search results. You will also notice that the ads are changing as you either start to type a word or complete your search phrase. For people who buy PPC ads, we would assume that the brief appearance of an ad would count as one “impression.” (It has been noted that the ad has to be visible for a certain number of seconds to count as an impression, but some people will read results less slowly than others before modifying a search.) For people who monitor clickthrough rates (CTR) in Google, this may be a good time to mark your calendar since you might see the same number of clicks, but more ad impressions. If you buy a lot of broad-match ads, then you may even see more impressions and clicks, but this is not always a good thing if you haven’t tightened up your campaign sufficiently to avoid low-quality clicks.
On the natural side, the impact of universal search may be more up in the air. For one thing, people may not move on to the second page of results if they see a limited number of matches above the fold while they’re typing. People may hit the backspace button to modify a search in real time. Since it takes a while to understand user behavior when a new feature is released, this either means that people will be more likely to jump on to “short tail” (1-2 word) results, or alternatively they may add “long tail” words to their searches until the right result magically floats to the top of the list. If this is the case, people who have invested in relevant, resourceful content should be getting a boost. Under either circumstance, people will probably revisit their SEO investment to make sure they can occupy a smaller field of results in order to satisfy the impatient user.
It should also be noted that Google does not always show its instant results, and we had to sign into our Google accounts in order to activate the feature. Therefore, some of your customers may be experiencing standard results, while others get to play around with Google’s latest offering. Like any other Google feature, instant search results can be significantly modified or pulled back if it isn’t viewed as popular or easy to use. From an SEO and PPC standpoint, people who have been working to make their sites relevant and user-friendly will hopefully see a benefit from instant results, though once again we would caution people to carefully watch their analytics and PPC reporting platforms to understand how their own individual sites are affected by this significant change in results delivery.
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