Google announced today that they are changing the basic interface for how search results are going to be delivered to users. Instead of making searchers type out the entire phrase they are researching, Google is going to start returning search results right away with each letter typed for the phrases that they guess people are actually looking for answers on. The search results could recycle for every letter typed.
I would assume that their thinking is that this will allow people to perform more accurate searches with their first search attempt instead of having to search a second or third time getting more specific with each one.
One would have to assume that this new change in the basic search results delivery will prompt more people to focus on short tail results instead of long tail results. Time will tell how it plays out. This stands to impact internet marketing quite substantially. Here is why:
Internet Marketers are often targeting the less savvy internet users. There is big money in it if you can identify those people and the types of products and services that they buy online. Those people are ones that these long tail buying keyword hunters like myself have been able to profit from. This presents a possible shift in the way that those people are going to act and interact with Google.
Are people going to continue typing out those really long tails? Are people going to perform two or three related searches for each topical research event? OR, are they going to find a close enough answer to what they seek after just typing the first two words of the long tail?
My Take On Google Instant
I believe that once it has been in practice for a few months, it will lead to people getting faster answers to the information they seek in Google. People will learn to harness the new faster results in unique ways. Some people are going to absolutely love it.
I believe this will strengthen the position of well known brands and well known websites. They are the ones who tend to rank better for short tail keywords. The small micro-website owners will probably get a little less organic traffic than they otherwise would without this change.
What about internet marketing?
It will be bad for certain internet marketers and no different for other ones. I think it is going to be very bad for the internet marketers who are making money through certain kinds of arbitrage. I am not talking about the commonly abused Adwords to Adsense arbitrage. I am talking about the internet marketers who find people searching for the wrong keywords and get them to find more relevant information by clicking on advertisements. Some of the so called Made For Adsense (MFA) websites do this quite effectively and quite profitably targeting primarily organic search engine traffic. It will be bad for some of those, which will make Google and searchers happier.
For the cream of the crop traffic in most niches, internet marketers are at the mercy of the search engines. Success is found by getting traffic from them and providing the solution that these people are looking for. Anything that inhibits that ability to get in front of those searchers is going to be bad for marketers.
If the effect is big enough, internet marketers will be forced to adapt in new ways. If it was really bad it is not unreasonable to assume that some internet marketers will focus less on Google and refocus their efforts to target Yahoo and Bing’s organic traffic.
Matt Cutts Responded Right Away To Questions About The Impact of Google Instant on SEO by Tweeting A Link To This Video
Time will tell how big of an impact this is going to have. We aren’t really going to know until after it has been fully rolled out and tested by the public. There might even be an opportunity or two created from this if some smart internet marketers can find a way to use this to their advantage.
What are your thoughts?
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I can surely see this affect long tail keyword internet marketers and I’m also a bit worried that this might affect some of the organic search traffic I’m getting for longer searches where I’m able to compete compared to simple keywords where I’m up against huuuuge websites with a billion of incoming links.
Oh well. We’ll see…
The really long tail is definitely going to be impacted. I doubt people are going to type out as many six or seven word long searches.
It’s going to get interesting Kathy, have they just killed SEO? or have they created an opportunity for instant feedback and possible instantSEO starting up.
The writing in a sense has been on the wall, it now makes sense why the last few google slaps have been the way they were, IE, slapping thin affiliate sites etc… Allyn of http://bloggerillustrated.com alluded to this all in a way when he wrote of how the slaps effected his sites, without realising it at the time, he was right about “authority sites” being the way forward, now it makes sense. :)
Interesting… ;)
The plus is, people can stop being so reliant on the big g, start diversing. ;)
This is also why I wrote a post about needing to stop building spam sites. You need to focus on building sites that deliver real value to people or you will be engaged in a never ending battle trying to trick Google into ranking you higher than it should. OR, you have to have a team of low wage workers that you can whip into doing all your dirty work. Can’t see that as being too much fun either.
Allyn is a smart dude. I wish I had his talent for video.
Interesting. I had just heard about the google change on the news today. Interestingly, the site that I earn the most from is way up in the frequency of visitors today and the number of pages per visit and many of them are coming from google. I don’t do much with SEO and have been adding more content pages in recent days and weeks. It’d be nice if this is a sign of things to come, but only time will tell, I guess. ;)
Maybe you’ll be one of the lucky ones Mike. Keep your fingers crossed.
Don’t be surprised if you have other sites on the other side of that coin though. If it is affecting one site for the better, then there is a losing site belonging to someone else on the other end of that trade.
I think it will make SEO even better and more important. With instant results while typing, you can really drill down to long tail keywords, which are easier to rank for than general phrases. Everyone will get used to using long tail keywords and phrases, and I think it will really showcase the hard work of SEO and online marketing.
Aaron,
I am not sure why you think people are going to drill down more into the long tail using this new interface. I would expect exactly the opposite. I would expect them to find an acceptable (not necessarily the ideal) search result using less words than they otherwise would have.
For instance if someone was to search for “where to buy used widgets under $50″, they are more likely to stop typing after the word widgets because there will be a very relevant search result already at the top of the list. The old method would have encouraged this person to type out the entire phrase. That really long tail would have been really easy to get position one for. The shorter tail will be harder.
I think you’re right, which is the worry of course.
It’s too early to tell, one issue would be if the AdWords KW tool is showing the Instant KWs or not, I thought they were mutually exclusive.
But it may still be OK for the product based niches. If a user is really looking at “X version 2.3″ or “Thing Model 000″ or what have you, they’ll still be looking for that.
I do agree w/Aaron, too – that this will make SEO more challenging and will help those doing hard work “shine”. Hopefully.
Hi Kathy
Oh no. This newbie learns some lessons about SEO and now I have to start rethinking although for my small niche and most of my traffic not coming from Google at the moment, maybe I just need to keep doing what I have been doing and eventually become the authority in my niche. I will keep writing content-rich articles and hopefully build up my traffic that way plus being part of the blogging community I seem to be getting more visitors to my site who are interested in my chosen niche. I really do enjoy your posts and am learning heaps. Thanks
Patricia Perth Australia
Patricia,
No you won’t have to re-learn anything. This change might effect keywords, but it will not affect the methods you use to target those keywords. That should stay the same. So don’t sweat it.
I think your niche is unique enough anyway that the impact will not be as great as in some others.
Kathy -
Can’t recall how I found you, I think through BizChickBlogs or TechnShare? Anyhoo…
I just wrote a post on this at my blog – I definitely reside with your sense that people need to stop building spammy sites. In a recent discovery, just yesterday in fact, one of my main competitors for a lucrative niche is nothing but a Flash-enabled MFA site…
Frustrating, since I put my heart into what I write, spend hours researching, and do quality work – although some of my earlier sites…meh.
Have to work through them and make them something quality. About “Instant” – not only does this nullify my current list of Keyword tools, all of which rely on the AdWords Keyword tool rather than “Suggest” or “instant”… but now I have one more metric to wonder about…
Typing in the keyword I think is “golden” into the search box to see what else pops up, and somehow gauging whether my visitors will actually bother with the rest of the query…?
Just had an idea, though…hmm…yup. Another post it shall be! Love your blog btw. And I’d like to chat with you about freelancing – I’ve been doing this for almost a year now, I think we ought to compare notes (or I’ll just take some).
Hey James,
Love to chat sometime. I have moved on from the traditional freelancing for the most part. I pretty much only work for companies now. One in particular. (Private) That is where I get steady work. I also work for myself by building niche websites for passive income. It really does take a while to learn what the heck is going on because there are so many people out there spreading bad info (like you can’t make money blogging with Adsense) because they don’t know what they are doing. There is insane money in Adsense. (Well, I reserve the right to revoke that comment until after this new Google Instant search thing plays out.)
The important thing with Google Instant search is going to be to determine what habits your targeted customer is going to use. Is your targeted customer going to type out the whole long tail or are they more likely to stop after two words?
I have a feeling that the really lucrative traffic (less savvy computer users) are going to be stopping after the short tail. If that prediction comes true, it means internet marketing to those people is going to be changed in a big way on Google. This will cause us to alter some of the methods we use to generate passive income.
I’ve definitely learned on AdSense thru a certain infamous e-book that just works like the dickens….I agree that the real money is in the passive income.
I’ve just checked and will be getting a nice check all around this next month, which is nice since I haven’t had the time to work my passive side as much.
I’ll email you and let’s talk – I’m on HubPages as well under “5institutes” – how’s that for brand awareness??
:)
I only bring that up since I’ve written a few on freelancing.
I think people are blowing the whole situation out of proportion by saying it will destroy long tail keywords. People who are searching for specific information will still be looking for the websites providing those specific answers. People who use a broad keyword for search are many times also looking for specific information but they don’t know the right keyword phrase to search for. This could potentially make quality long tail usage even more important as people will be able to skim through different webpages quicker to find their answers.
I think you are right Brian, but only for more sophisticated users (of which all of we bloggers would be included in).
Think about the people who don’t type well at all because they never spent that much time in front of a computer. I am talking about those who are two finger users and the like. Those people are more valuable to the niche marketer. Those people click affiliate links and click on advertisements because they don’t know any better and because their eyes aren’t trained yet to ignore advertising. Savvy people do not click on anywhere near as many advertisements or affiliate links.
The people who will still go for the really long tail are the most savvy search engine users out there who have already learned how to search properly.
The less experienced and less savvy users are more likely to stop typing as soon as a somewhat relevant site appears in the results.
there’ll be a lot of competition with just one keyword, looks like it will take a while before people can figure out a new strategy. I hope they apply that with their keyword research tool.
“Google is going to start returning search results right away with each letter typed for the phrases that they guess people are actually looking for answers on”
As long as their guesses are accurate!
I think this raises the point that Google really doesn’t care about returning the absolute best possible page it can find for a given query. Rather, it is more concerned about finding an acceptable one (acceptable in the eyes of the searcher) for any given query.
If they were truly concerned about people finding the absolute best possible result, you would expect them to take measures that encourage the really, really long tail search. Maybe they could find a way (like they were doing with their suggested search) for people to get to the longer tail instead.
The best and most precise results are found in the longer tails.
I have been playing with the new Google, and what struck me was that when a Google page comes up while you type, you only see the top half of the page. Those links on lower half are not visible.
I think this “feature” will make it a lot more tempting for people who see a page they are interested in, even before they finish typing, and will then click on one of the top links without even having the opportunity to see or scan the entire page.
Just working with it tells me the top spot suddenly became a lot more valuable. This definitely will change things somewhat, if not a Lot.
Rick
I agree Rick. The top spot in Google just became even more valuable. It will probably take a little while for that info to reach the small business owner.
One thing I don’t like about it is that, at this point at least, the number of search results you get is limited. I prefer to have 100 on each results page. With “instant” turned on, I only get 10.
I had not thought about that aspect Mike. I wonder if they are going to offer people alternative access to the old system? I guess we will have to wait to see how it plays out in the media over the next few weeks.
Mike -
Just FYI, Feedburner’s taking your link juice…you need to take off the “item” I think it is…crumbs.
Forgot how. Anyway, there was a recent post about that (Feedburner taking your ComLuv link juice).
Your link is routed thru Google, vs. thru to your blog – don’t know if that’s what you want, but I personally think the big G-meister has enough backlinks…
James – Thanks. That link, goes to my personal blog, which earns barely a pittance, so from that perspective, it’s no big deal. However, I made one change that should fix the issue. If it doesn’t, I’ll look some more. It may even turn out that I delete the Feedburner accounts. I don’t look at them very often anyhow.
This is all very interesting to me Kathy. I have been out of the loop just a bit for the past few weeks so it is news to me. Also, a bit scary with competition of certain keywords an use of long-tails.
Also, although I may be one sided on this issue, I don’t really like Google trying to guess was I am searching for, just me though, I suppose some prefer it.
I know what you mean about guessing. They don’t build their search engine with advanced users in mind. They design it for average users. I guess they figure that average users would rather have extra help finding something relevant.
I personally am not one of those people who is all that quick to embrace major changes to things that I have learned how to use quite well. I like the idea of offering a new search engine. I just wish they had given users the choice between the new one and the old one.
If Bing could eliminate more of the spam from its engine, then Google would really have a problem on its hands.
Kathy – I agree with you; we are trying to “overthink” the issue. The best keywords were never found through tools, software, etc, but through good old-fashioned research.
Time will show how big of a deal this will be.
By the way, I happened to publish a post on Google Instant this morning and I added a link back to this post of yours. Hope you’ll get some of my traffic and my readers will get a different point of view on the issue.
Also, I am opening my blog for guest posting. Interested?
Ana Hoffman
Thank you for thinking of me. I might take you up on that guest posting. So far I haven’t guest posted anywhere for this blog. I appreciate the offer.
Over thinking things in this business is easy to do as I am sure you well know. I am going to wait and see. I have a bad feeling about the really long tails though.
Hi Kathy one things for sure this is all good news to those selling ever newer, latest and greatest traffic generation systems. Same mantra – beat Google – SEO holy Grail secrets blah blah…..lol! the only certainty online is that inertia is a killer and change is what feeds the entrepreneur
thanks for sharing. Kiaran
Interesting way to look at it Kiaran.
I’m still on the fence with regard to how this update will affect SEO in practice. It will certainly not change the need for creating high quality content or getting relevant inbound links. After using it a few days, I think we’ll see a greater change in PPC. I’m guessing increased impressions and lower CTRs. All it takes is a distraction from phone call, etc. and someone has clocked another false impression. Maybe it’s time to step back and look at the bigger picture – diversification and social media strategy.
I agree with your take on it Sean. I suspect that the number of impressions for Adwords ads will increase and the resulting CTR will decrease.
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