Google Instant's Effect On SEO

Tags: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

You may have recently noticed when you start a search in Google, you will get results instantly as you type. This feature is being referred to as "Google Instant". If you start to type in "lawn care service Plymouth Michigan", when you first type "lawn", you will see some results, when you add in the word "care", the results will change, actually the results can change with each letter that you add! So, now people will likely end up seeing results on keywords that they never would have searched before this new feature. This means that they will see the results for broad words first.

In a situation like this, smaller companies that optimized their sites for long tail keywords (longer more descriptive keywords), will likely lose some traffic. People may start their search and click on a result before they even end up typing what they originally intended. In fact, that's what I have been seeing. For campaigns targeting long tail keywords, I've seen a loss in traffic. For campaigns that I manage that target broad keywords, I have seen an increase in traffic.

Long tail keywords are now seeing less searches. What does this mean? Newer companies who are not getting ranked well for broad competitive terms will need to focus their effort on ranking better for bigger terms. In the mean time, they will have to spend more time/money/energy on building their rankings and searching out alternative traffic sources. This new feature has had a pretty big impact on SEO and the landscape has changed.