The Impact Of Google Instant On Search , Searchers (The Users) And SEO

By now the whole SEO fraternity and the web industry knows that Google had a press conference yesterday wherein they announced the launch of Google Instant which aims at making the search experience more fast , fluid and fun.

Google Instant Launch Event

The 3 main components around which Google instant revolves are :

  1. Instant results,
  2. Predictions
  3. Scroll to search. 

Google Instant has an impact on the display of search results, the searcher and of course the SEO industry. Let us first talk about the searcher as the search industry cannot exist without him.

Google Instant churns out predictions for what the searcher may be searching depending on the most likely terms possible which are smarter offering a suggestion to the searcher as he keys in every character. Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help to guide the searcher. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

In short people who are not sure about the query they want to search they get the suggestions as he/she types but this time along with the display of SERPs changing accordingly and instantly without hitting the ‘ENTER” key. The arrow keys are to be used to make selections.

What is important to note is the speed with which it all takes place. Its fast and really fast. Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search. Google claimed yesterday that in just an hour that Google Instant has been up it has already saved 36,542 hours of our time. Well if time is money then it surely has added that much productivity potential also to every industry as search is a vital aspect for research and knowledge for each and every industry.

Marissa Mayer of Google who presented this concept stated that Google Instant isn't search as you type, it's search before you type. She even mentioned in an interview that Google Instant is to search what power steering is to a car and it surely helps people with slow typing speeds.

Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search
With Google Instant        Before Google Instant

Google Instant is starting to roll-out to users on Google domains in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia who use the following browsers: Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8. Please note, users on domains other than Google.com can only access Google Instant if they are signed in to a Google Account. Google will continue to add new domains and languages over the next several months. Google Instant is not yet available on mobile, but Google plans to release it soon.

Last but not the least the impact on the SEO industry. SEO has its bread and butter coming from search so it is highly important to know and analyze the impact of Google Instant on SEO.

Google Instant Should Make The SEO Industry Flourish Rather Than Perish.

Whenever there is any new technology or update released related to search people keep on making predictions and statement like SEO is dead but as Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land tweeted during the launch of Google Instant –

The Tweet- “ironically, SEO keeps living despite "SEO is dead" predictions that keep dying over the years. there's been plenty’

Yes, SEO cannot be dead because as long as there is search people will work on their website to make them rank higher. Hence SEO and Search go hand in hand. With Google Instant the need and importance of SEO remains the same or infact is much enhanced as people would like to see their websites rank for all the possible predictions related to their terms and would surely be ranked in the first 3 of page 1. This should make the SEO industry flourish rather than perish. So SEO is not dead but has become more exciting and challenging.

Google instant has not affected the rankings. The basics of the search are the same. So for whatever terms your site has been ranking it continues to rank for them on those SERPs. But, in the long run there is a possibility of the search behavior changing.

When the searcher gets the predictions and results at the speed of thought his patience to scroll down to other lower results and going to the next page for searching may diminish. Of course only time will tell and this will solely depend on the quality of the search results on page 1 especially the first 5 . If Google keeps on ranking Wikipedia and other such websites for initial rankings people will be forced to scroll down but that may have an adverse effect on Google and people may shift to using Bing for a traditional kind of search experience.

Well only time will tell what will be the actual impact of Google Instant on the search behavior but it surely will result in smart search and thereby saving a lot of time and thereby reducing disguised employment.

Author

  • Bharati Ahuja

    Bharati Ahuja is the Founder of WebPro Technologies LLP. She is also an SEO Trainer and Speaker, Blog Writer, and Web Presence Consultant, who first started optimizing websites in 2000. Since then, her knowledge about SEO has evolved along with the evolution of search on the web. Contributor to Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch, etc.

September 9, 2010
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