The Impact of Google Instant on SEO and PPC

With Google Instant, each time a new recognisable word or phrase is typed that changes the results set in a meaningful way, Google will fetch the search results for that word – without you having to hit ''search''. Of course, there will be many who will say this is nothing new, with the likes of Anatamedia.com and  kewboardr.com running similar processed results for a number of years. However, with Google virtually owning the Search arena, this is now big news!

What of the impact for SEO?

According to Bunn, SEO campaigns including long multi-word keyword variants may see a drop in traffic for those keywords as a result of streaming search. Why? Users may now find something to click on before completely typing their originally intended search term (depending, of course, on Google being able to provide accurate enough results at an earlier stage in the search). Consequently, to be visible/ show up in search results, it may become more important for websites to optimise for the shorter, constituent parts of longer keywords.

For example, if a website has optimised for and holds good rankings for 'cheap car insurance UK', that term may lose search traffic as UK users find that the shorter 'cheap car insurance' returns several relevant looking results, negating the need to finish their sentence.

Bunn points out that the constituent parts of longer keywords are often the types of generic keywords that are typically dominated by big brands and powerful sites with the cash to maintain rankings in an extremely competitive keyword space. So for smaller websites, this could well be a case of first Google giveth (the ''May Day update'') then it taketh away (streaming search results).

It is early days yet and as Bunn points out, marketers will have to hold tight for the exact repercussions, which could also extend to complications for rank checking software (if AJAX is involved in retrieving search results) and impacts on the search demand figures given by Google's keyword tools (if each stage in the streaming search counts as an impression).