Google Instant, Google’s big push to give users faster results, was launched this week, and it did not go unnoticed. Media coverage has been huge and industry experts have been busy predicting how it will affect both users and those listed, for whom Google rankings make the world of business difference.
What is Google Instant?
Previously, when you used Google you needed to type in a complete search query in order to produce results, and you needed to hit ‘return’ or click ‘search’ for the search to be performed. Now, with Google Instant, the search performs the second you start typing. Google Instant effectively predicts what you want to search for, if you type in the letter ‘g’, you will immediately get a range of options returned without doing anything else at all. In this case the first result is gmail.com. Google Instant works on the basis of commonly used search terms and search selections, typing ‘w’ for example will return ‘weather’ as the first result, being a very common search query.
Web Design and Build and Google Instant
First of all the basic structure of a page changes because you are seeing fewer results. Where a site would get the chance to appear on a search result page if a particular term was searched, now the chances of it appearing are lessened as the user continues to refine what they search for as they type, making it harder to predict what terms will be useful for SEO.
This means target key words and phrases will be expanded because searches will be more and more specific. Users are more likely to stay on Google until they have found exactly what they are looking for, as opposed to being exposed to more sites. Your company may be exactly what the user is searching for, but without the right keywords you will be limiting your visibility greatly.
Google Instant and Freestyle Interactive
As an agency, Freestyle stays on the cutting edge of search technologies. This new offering is only a day old we are developing a plan to utilise Google Instant to get the best out of search results for our clients. One of the most obvious decisions to make is ‘are long tail keyphrases still as relevant as they were?’ Or, to put it another way, does optimising a site based on specific keywords – which would have been highly successful prior to Google Instant – now mean that a site loses out due to auto-suggest? For example, if a user searches for an online shop using ‘product+guides’ and ‘product+support’ they are looking for the same type of information, although these queries give different search results, one of which will be suggested first by Google’s auto-suggest. Optimise a site on the wrong keyphrase and visibility plummets.
But it’s important not to panic, and to remember that traditional results will remain unchanged.
- If your site was number 1 on Google before it will still be number 1.
- Auto-suggest does reach a point where it struggles to predict what you are looking for, and you will need to complete your query and hit ‘return’ or click ‘search’ in the normal way.
- Google Instant also does not yet work on all browsers so it is vital not to abandon the SEO techniques you use at present.
We’re already working on deciphering what algorithm auto-suggest uses, and how we might work with it for your SEO.
Check out the video on techcrunch from Google’s Marissa Mayar to find out more about Google Instant.