Google Instant and it’s Instant Impact

by Mike McAnally @nordicclick

There is a lot of buzz around Google’s release of ‘Instant’ searching. Instant is a game changer in regards to the way agencies and companies manage their organic and paid search programs. I have conducted a lot of research by submitting numerous keyword searches and have compiled some observations:

1. Instant rewards powerful brands with high page rank – When you type in the letter ‘H’ the first returns are hotmail, hulu, home depot and Hennepin county as my geo-location result.
2. Instant rewards unique names – It occurred to me that Instant was much like Scrabble. The more unique your name was the easier it was to get a high ranking, similar to a high word score in the game.
3. Instant will create a battle for a single letter – Who ever thought that a single letter typed into a search engine would be so important.  Zappos clearly has a monopoly on the letter Z. However, when you type in ‘E’ I guarantee you that ESPN and Expedia would love to leapfrog eBay for that top spot.
4. Instant adds a ‘pop culture’ distraction – Almost every search I made resulted in a movie, sports team, celebrity, or city with images and results below the screen. That could be just enough to throw off someone’s chain of thought resulting in a different path then originally planned.
5. Instant allows an opt out – You can turn off Instant in an Instant! It will be interesting if Google will divulge the number of people who turn it off.
6. Instant causes Instant Buzz – Anything Google releases causes a buzz and results in millions of conversations. All those Social Media tracking tools will be on fire today.
7. Instant feels Big Brother-ish – Start typing in a keyword and if Instant nails it with the first search result it actually felt a little creepy almost like someone was reading my mind.
8. Instant opens the door for black hat searches – By optimizing for the first few letters scammers may be able to direct searches to damaging malware and spyware sites.
9. Instant makes SEO even more relevant – SEO and the correct selection of keywords will result in more traffic. Sites with solid SEO best practices will benefit by keying in on the terms most important to their business. Throwing mud against the wall no longer will suffice.
10. Instant makes long-tail terms more relevant – Some people are saying that Instant will kill the long-tail but I think search behavior will lead users to keep typing until they reach the keyword that is in their mind. For example, Allen Edmonds shoes is a client of ours. With Instant I needed to type in Allen before I saw a search result. But once I hit ‘Allen Ed’ I started to see more specific results including the actual name of shoes. This leads the searcher to product detail pages bypassing the home and category page that are often the choke points for sales and conversions.

Let me know your thoughts. I am sure I will receive them in an Instant!