Google Instant Chaos
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Comedian Steven Wright used to joke that he had a packet of dehydrated water but he didn’t know what to add. That kind of confusion is like what’s going on right now in the SEO community since the introduction of Google Instant.
The “experts” are arguing among themselves about how Instant is going to effect SEO, and what we should all do about it. It’s been stated that SEO is dead, and that Instant will have no effect whatsoever, and everything in between.
Is Instant The Death Of SEO?
Uh, no. This idea is just ridiculous. Instant shows search query results based on a prediction of what is being searched for. These results are still the product of the Google algorithm, which by the way, Google says has not changed.
Of course the algorithm will change, as it has before and so what? That hasn’t killed SEO before, so why would a change kill SEO now?
People will still be plugging keywords into Google to find information, goods and services. Companies will still put up websites and try to capture the eyeballs of all those people plugging in the keywords. They will still hire an “expert” to help them get those eyeballs, and coveted clicks that follow.
All you folks out there who make a living trying to figure out how Google sorts those results, won’t have to start flipping burgers anytime soon.
Instant may change SEO, it may not, but it won’t kill it.
Does Google Instant Matter?
Yes. Maybe. We’ll see. I don’t know…
Of course it matters, but how? What does Instant change?
I really don’t have an answer. I’m sure it changes something, but I can’t figure out what.
It seems to me that the only searcher it may influence is the person who doesn’t really know what they are looking for. I’m not sure that there is a way to optimize for that searcher in the first place, let alone actually gain something from them.
A fundamental principle of SEO is that all traffic is not created equal. Rather the goal of SEO is to attract targeted traffic to a website. If you sell sparkly pink tricycles for adults, you want to get the searcher who is looking for “sparkly pink tricycles for adults,” or some variant of that keyword phrase, to your site.
Instant may or may not guess correctly when someone starts typing “spark…” into the search box. If Instant actually predicts correctly the searcher will happily click on those relevant results. If not she (or he) will just keep on typing until the results appear for what they are looking for, i.e. that cool pink trike.
And they may have to actually hit the “enter” key, which is something Google seems to think is a huge waste of time.
The upshot is that it is highly unlikely that the searcher will decide that what they really want is “sparknotes” or “spark plugs” and abandon the original search. Gotta get that trike, right?
Looking Ahead
Time will tell what impact Instant has on SEO, but I suspect it will be minimal. Of course I could be wrong. But I doubt it.
And since I like a bit of entertainment, and I am a Bob Dylan fan, I leave you with this video that Google put out there to illustrate Google Instant. Enjoy!
My only problem with this is they could have used the whole song, It’s a drag when it just stops!
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