Instant Gratification Spills into Search
By Jeff MacGurn
Google introduced a new capability to its search engine results page this week, a functionality called “Google Instant”. Just in case you haven’t heard the clamor web-wide regarding the new capability, here’s a brief description:
- Google Instant is what Google is calling the next wave in its goal to make search more targeted, faster, and better able to understand you and what you want to see.
- Explicitly, Google Instant (per Google) combines predictive search (which we have already seen for years) with a real time visualization of the results of that search.
- Google Instant displays what it predicts you are searching for, allowing you to not only see your results faster, but also see results along the way as you type.
We believe this change is significant!
Though we caution advertisers to realize that all prognostications on the impact of Google Instant on user behavior at this point are just that – supposition. This article will discuss Google Instant, what its goal is from a user perspective, what we predict this change will mean for SEO and PPC performance, and how we plan to test our prediction.
What is Google Instant Trying to Do?
For years, Google has tried to predict what you were searching for on their engine. Google does this to (a) reduce the time it takes for a searcher to log a query (and therefore provide a better user experience) and (b) because it saves Google in processing time with its support services (if you take two seconds to type a query versus four seconds, given the number of searches conducted, Google estimates this saves them 360 million hours of data center time annually [citation]. This is not going away. Google will continue to try to predict your search, as you probably have experienced with the drop down menu you now see – like in the example below for “Covario.”
Google Instant is taking this one step further by adding the visualization and changing the results page that gets updated in real-time, as you type.
What Does This Mean for SEO?
The first key change Google Instant causes is in the drop down “suggestion box” that attempts to predict queries. This, depending on the query, occupies one and sometime up to three of the advertisement positions on the “all important” first page. Google is rendering the paid and universal search listings as high as possible, but is pushing the SEO results “below the fold.” Whereas in the past, a standard web search would yield four organic listings above the fold, this does not happen now until searchers commit to their search and the page re-renders.
This means that top ranking is now more important than ever. We believe users are less likely to scroll below the fold as related results are instantly reconfigured as the search query is completed. Before a user would type in a search query, check the results, refine the search and then repeat the process until they found what they were looking for, there is now the potential that Google Instant helps with the delivery of this process.
Here is another example for the term “home mortgage”. There are no less than four (4) paid listings showing in the prime Google Instant real estate and only one organic listing. The four (4) organic results return once the searcher commits to the search and the standard search page is rendered as the suggestion box recedes.