Google wants to free up your time in 2 to 5 second increments. Today the search giant unveiled Google Instant, a new product that predicts the user’s search query and displays search results on the fly. If you start to type in “Baltimore food delivery,” for instance, before you’re done typing the first term, you’ll begin to see results about Baltimore in real time.
Our tests indicate that users with Google accounts will be opted into the service automatically.
There are big implications for local search, search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO), and Twitter is already abuzz. Google itself admitted on its Analytics blog that this is a game changer, saying, “With this change, you might notice some fluctuations in AdWords impression volume and traffic for organic keywords.”
Only time will tell how current campaigns will be impacted, but this could have big implications for campaigns leveraging long tail keywords – that is, the strategy of targeting less-competitive niche markets by optimizing against more specific and longer search terms. Users won’t finish typing a five-term query when what they’re looking for is already in front of them. And if advertisers begin bidding on the same head terms, this could increase competition and drive up cost-per-click (CPC) prices as a result.
I recommend looking at the keywords you’re bidding on that appear in Google Instant and monitoring them closely to make sure prices are not severely affected.
In the meantime, if you’d like more information on Instant, check out the official Google Instant page or the Advertiser FAQ.
