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A few days ago saw the big launch of Google Instant, and if you haven’t tried it yet, it’s a totally different search experience compared to the Google of old. Initial reaction was mixed from SEO is dead to SEO lives on to my initial reaction that in fact, it’s just plain annoying. Now that all the initial reactions are out of the way, let’s take a step back and analyze how this really effects paid and organic search from a user experience standpoint, as well as a marketer’s standpoint.
Paid Search (User)
From a user standpoint, the sponsored listing haven’t changed. The only difference now is that users may see many more variations of them as they type their query. Now, these will probably pass them by without them noticing much, but they still rapidly change. I’m sure Google did extensive user testing on this, but we’ll see how this plays out over time. I think you’ll hear from some that they don’t like the new interface or that it’s too distracting, but it’s still new, so we’ll see over time.
Paid Search (Marketer)
From a marketing perspective, what the heck do you do now? Stay the course? Change your whole strategy? Well, my early thought is that head terms will start to play a much bigger influence on user behavior. As you type, Google “guesses” what your going to type next. So if I type “auto” it guesses that I mean “autozone”, “auto trader”, “auto parts” and a few others. It’s these guesses, much as a I said about Google Suggest, will start to sculpt user awareness around what Google recommends. As a result, my early impression is that long tail is going to take a bit of a hit. Users are inherently lazy and with Google’s redesigned interface, it’s as if they are funneling people towards top brands or sites and it’s because of that, I think some users are going to bail out earlier than they might have without the suggestions and predictions. There have been some analysts that have said Google Instant may be a play to game the volume based measurement system and make Google appear larger than it is already. I don’t think that’s it entirely. I think this play is about increasing profits faster than they would have otherwise. Here’s my theory – cost per click bids have only been increasing as more competition goes into the marketplace. This is good for Google and bad for marketers, however, as head terms become more and more expensive, good marketers have been focusing more on the tail where more qualified customers often lie. This is bad for Google, but good for marketers. With this platform change, Google has said “Ok marketers, we’re going to push your customers back up the keyword funnel to shorter head terms and if you want to follow, you have to pay the price.” Am I wrong? Possibly, but tell me it doesn’t make sense on some level.
Organic Search (User)
Same interface as before for the user, only now the results flash by rapidly as the user types. The other difference I noticed is that when a user moves from page to page, it looks like the entire page fades out and fades in with new results, as opposed to a complete page refresh. I assume this is related to some AJAX magic Google is using to serve up these results in the first place on the fly.
Organic Search (Marketer)
From a marketing perspective, I think the suggestions are also going to effect the head terms more positively than tail terms. For authoritative, high ranking sites who rank well for head terms, I don’t think you need to worry about much. Continue to do what you’ve been doing, however, if you are a long tail site that subsists primarily on long tail terms, I’d be wary of these changes. Based on my experience, I’m going to assume that some users who are unfocused are going to start typing their query, up comes some results which are close to what they were looking for, and they click away never fully realizing the long tail search they may have entered if the suggestions and predictions not appeared. Again, this is early and we’ll have to see what the industry nets out, but that’s my initial reaction.
And if you’re looking for additional opinions and resources, check out this complete breakdown of industry analysts and form your own opinion or look at Google’s take on it on the AdWords Blog or the AdWords FAQ. Have you seen any changes initially to your campaign results? What do you think is the future of this “feature”?
Image courtesy of svenstorm
