Google Instant and Its Affect on SEO September 27, 2010
How Will Google Instant Affect SEO?
Google has enhanced its popular search engine with a new tool called Google Instant. As you have probably already noticed, Google Instant provides you with quicker, more accurate search results as you type. You no longer need to type in the full search phrase before finding the results that you are seeking online. Although this hasn’t altered SEO yet, it certainly has the potential to affect it in the near future.
Google Instant offers predictions as to what you are planning to search for as you type. Right now a core goal of SEO is to show up on the first page of Google for specific search times. Google Instant may change this goal or add a secondary goal related to appearing in the top search results for the predictive text. The predictive text can actually alter the way that we decide to search.
For example, let’s say that your customer is doing a search for Your Business Name. Because of your previous SEO efforts, Your Business Name shows up in the first page of Google’s search results after the person has typed it in. However, let’s say that one of the things that you really want to promote about your business is your effort towards sustainability. With proper attention to SEO, you could encourage this to show up as part of the predictive text. As your customer begins to type in Your Business Name, a predictive text option might read Your Business Name sustainability. The customer will then have the option of exploring that information in more depth.
From a customer’s perspective, he or she may be able to find more and varied information using Google Instant for search. In Google Instant, he can use the up and down arrows and can also add and subtract words to the search to get a preview of the breadth of information available for the topic that he is searching. He may also be able to gain a better understanding of how to hone and refine his search efforts over time. From a business owner’s perspective, the goal will be to tailor a website to encourage the right type of predictive text to come up when people are searching for topics relevant to your site. So Instant will change SEO although it isn’t yet clear how that is specifically going to happen.
Finally, it is important to understand how Google Instant may change a customer’s perspective on search. This new tool will allow us all to get search results more quickly. Over time, this can make us more impatient about searches. Many people will stop moving on to the second and third pages of a Google search because they will expect the most accurate results on the first page. For that reason, SEO to reach Google’s first page may actually be more important than ever before!
