The New Google Search - Could This Affect Traffic To Your Business?

Google Instant Search

Yesterday Google unveiled it’s new instant search, which makes hitting “enter” unnecessary. As you type Google instantly offers suggestions in a drop down window, predicting what it thinks you are looking for. Their selling point? It saves you a whopping 2-5 seconds of search time.

But, more importantly, how does this affect your marketing and organic search results?

It’s too soon to tell, but here are a few things you might want to watch out for:

1.) Will long tail keyword searches drop off?

Fewer people may finish their intended long tail phrase and opt instead for one of Google’s instant offerings. This could negatively affect websites or blogs that depend on long tail searches.

2.) Will Google’s suggestions shape keyword prevalence?

We suspect it will most certainly affect the number of times a specific keyword is used – particularly synonyms. If Google’s prediction is influential enough, one keyword could gain a huge increase in traffic – all because Google offered that suggestion. This means websites ranking for niche markets with slightly less popular keyword variants will suffer a big hit. This also begs the question: Is there a conflict of interest for Google to serve up one keyword over another? After all, they do make money on those keywords, and charge by how frequently they’re used.

3.) Will keyword research become more challenging?

If you do keyword research with Google Keyword Tool, you know it used to be pretty clear what the number of searches meant. But with people potentially accepting  one of Google’s suggestions – rather than continuing with their own keyword or phrase – the relevancy of the keyword tool becomes less clear. It may take some time for the new results to become accurately reflected in the Keyword Tool.

4.) Will a significant number of people opt out of instant search?

Google offers the option to turn off instant results, but I suspect few will do so. Why? Certainly not the “time saving benefit” of 2 to 5 seconds. No, but the suggestions are actually useful.

The outcome of the top three scenarios depends upon people changing their planned course of action and choosing Google’s suggested keyword phrase. I myself am likely to view Google’s suggestions looking for either the one I want or a better phrase than the one I had planned.

What do you think of the new Google Instant Search? Will you change your search behavior? Do you see other potential issues?