Google Instant: the ‘Marmite’ of Search

As I’m sure most are aware, and for those who are not, Google released Google Instant last night to the world.

Where is it available?

I say the world, actually it seems to be rolled out across the US, i.e. on www.google.com – although you can use that from any location – but for ‘regional Googles’ you still need to be signed into a Google account to experience it in a select batch of countries:

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.

However it is also worth noting that Google Instant won’t work if you try to use it:

• from your browser’s search box
• from the Google Toolbar
• from iGoogle
• from other places that access a Google search
• if you’ve previously disabled Google’s autocomplete feature
• if you’re using Google SSL search
• if you’ve disabled Instant (Just hit the toggle link in the upper right hand corner of the page next to the search button)

So how does Google Instant work?

At its most basic level:

• When the user begins typing their query into the Google search box, Google will display a short list of predicted queries that are related to the letters the user has started to type in
• As the user types these predictions may change depending on the characters being entered
• Now these two points are nothing new. What has changed is that as the user types the results page alters to provide relevant results to the query
• This results page can change multiple times depending on the type of search query you are entering

For example try typing in the the query ‘car phone holder for droid’ to see the variations in results and possibly how sites that rank for the head terms may start getting more traffic for tail terms, even if they don’t rank for them, as people click on what is being displayed at the start of their query.

At a deeper level:

• Google Instant will pull in regionally relevant query predictions and results based on your location. This has been around for a while, for example if I start typing in ‘hotels in’ I will see results for ‘hotels in brighton’, ‘hotels in london’ however one of my colleagues in the US may see predictions for terms such as ‘hotels in new york’, ‘hotels in las vegas’
• Google Instant will be personalised based on your search behaviour. This again has been around for a while – if you have not opted out of personalised results then you have them by default

PPC Results

For those who are concerned about potential increases in ad impressions due to these fluctuating results based on keywords being typed in, Google states the following in the Adwords FAQ, concerning how impressions are measured:

• The user begins to type a query on Google and clicks anywhere on the page (a search result, an ad, a spell correction, a related search)
• The user chooses a particular query by clicking the Search button, pressing Enter, or selecting one of the predicted queries
• The user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of three seconds

My thoughts are that as people get used to this new interface and pause to have a ‘look around’ they may take more than a few seconds and so initially while this beds in ad impressions will see an increase.

So what does this mean?

There are already lots of opinion pieces out there, Google Instant guides, some are for this new development and others believe it is the end of SEO.

With regards to the ‘end of SEO’, whenever anything new is released into the search marketplace there tends to be some concern around the future of SEO – and more importantly whether we (I) will have a job in the new year! As we tell out clients it is all about adapting to the changing marketplace, understanding what is changing and evolving strategies to meet these new developments; and it is exactly the same for SEO.

Now for brands, initially I believe that as people get used to Google Instant there will be an artificial increase in head terms as people test out this new way of searching. But as they get used to it we would expect to see an increase in tail term traffic as people begin to further explore Google’s index. More than ever, brands need to understand the user journey and seek to be visibile within search, whether through PPC or SEO, to build that brand awareness and inform their target audiences’ personalised results.

I would also expect to see an increase in brand searches for some brands. For example as I start to type in ‘car’ the predicted query is for ‘carphone warehouse’, and when I start to type in ‘hotels’ the first predicted results is ‘hotmail’.

Potentially this could turn into the ‘Marmite‘ of search – with ‘power-searches’ loving the extra 5 seconds saved per search, but the constantly changing results putting off other users who prefer a more sedate pace of searching.

As ever only time will tell how quickly this will be picked up and integrated into our day to day lives. A true way of telling whether this is a another Google Wave or a keeper could be seen in the response from the likes of Bing.

Did you know?

Finally some facts from Google on the new Google Instant:

• Before Google Instant, the typical searcher took more than 9 seconds to enter a search term, and we saw many examples of searches that took 30-90 seconds to type
• Using Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search
• If everyone uses Google Instant globally, we estimate this will save more than 3.5 billion seconds a day. That’s 11 hours saved every second
• 15 new technologies contribute to Google Instant functionality