Google Instant Search is the first thing in a long time that has made me want to go to Google.com rather than just search fromt the Chrome URL bar. That in and of itself is quite a feat. Really. But, oh man… every time Google makes a change to search people (mostly people who don’t really understand SEO) come out yelling about how this is “going to kill SEO.” And it happened again this week with Google’s release of “Instant Search.” But Instant Search is only going to kill SEO if you’re terrible at SEO. For the rest of us it represents more opportunities and targets to optimize for, and even thought the analytic tools may not quite be there yet to break down user behavior to a point that makes it completely easy to take advantage of, there is still plenty that can be done. And I’d love some discussion or feedback on this one, so hit me up with comments here or via @supnah on Twitter.
What is Google Instant Search?
Google Instant Search basically means that when you are performing a search from google.com Google will start serving results to you before you hit the “return” button – while you are still typing in your search term. Google effectively tries to guess what term you are ultimately going to type in and serve related results for it before you’ve even finished in order to help you save time. Google will also serve up recommended search terms that it thinks you might be aiming for so that you can quickly select one of those with one click rather than having to finish typing all of the rest of the letters in your search term. Here are examples of both… (click for enlarged view) Continue reading →