By now most of you have heard – and are most likely using Google Instant. I’ve waited to make a post about it, until more data has come in from the labs. I’ve also tried to bypass the hysteria of “SEO is dead” crap .. so let’s cut to the chase and explore Google Instant and what it means to you.
What is Google Instant?
Google will now use their suggestion engine to automatically show you the results below as you are typing.
How do they determine what to show you? (And more importantly, what should a webmaster do?)
Contrary to what was posted immediately after the Instant launch .. you will not need to (or want to) start optimizing for “letters” in Google …
Let’s look …
Let’s break this down as simple as possible …
I’m typing … dog n
You’ll see the results below are NOT for “dog n” … but they are for the 1st suggestion “dog names” and the organic and sponsored links are all for “dog names”.
So what does this mean for SEO targeting?
He are the current takeaways I’m seeing that Google Instant will change in “search behavior”
1. Short Tail is dead — and this is a good thing. Dog is a short tail keyword and previously people would type in Dog, and then go from there, after viewing the search results. But chances are you aren’t just looking for Dog, when they want something. They want maybe Dog Names, Dog Breeds, Dog Training, Dog Food, etc… and now with Google Instant, they will see these results as they type — and results displayed. My Theory is that people will naturally over time, will simply keep typing the more appropriate query to what they actually want.
2. Long Tail has changed … With Google Instant pushing people towards the common query, chances are there won’t be a strong need to type in long queries anymore. But and this is a big but .. The long tail will always be alive for more direct queries. Like local attachments, and specific items. So while strong traffic won’t hit Long Tail anymore — Money traffic will still hit it these words, and maybe more than ever.
3. Medium Tail is king … 3-4-5 Word queries are now the king of SEO. Google instant are pushing the search towards the specific goal search .. which is usually around 3 – 5 words. So if you are looking for next campaign –use this as your base.
On the overall I think this is very good news for webmasters. The short tail was always the hardest to rank for and now in one fail swoop, the 1 word query has been eliminated for the most part. 2 word queries are still a strong play, but only if they 2 words specifically target what a person would want.
As a side note, keyword research has now changed a little. It’s very important that you are targeting the words that come up in the Google Instant search box. If you are targeting the 2-word string, you MUST target every 3 word string that appears, and so on and so on… as such my keyword attack software has been delayed a little bit as I upgrade the keyword system to take this information into account.
CAUTION
This is very important … if you are an Adwords buyer, immediately re-asses your campaigns. If you are targeting 1 word queries (or even some 2 word queries), you are being charged when your ad is displayed with Google Instant. This is a huge potential money waster.
Let me know your thoughts …
