The effect of Google Instant on searchers, site owners and advertisers is not yet clear. Early analyses suggest an only marginal effect on searcher behaviour, while some studies see Instant slightly pushing people away from 2- and 3-word keyphrases towards 6- and 7+ word search queries.

Qwerius recommends:

01Keep a closer eye than usual on your CPMCost Per Thousand: Google AdWords' impressions-based charging model and PPC budget burn until you're sure that Instant is not going to throw your budgeting out.

02Talk to your SEO people about the impact of Google Instant on the SERPSearch Engine Results Pages rankings for your keyphrase portfolio.

03Watch your analytics reports for new emerging trends.

DRILLDOWN

What is Google Instant?

• Google has had predictive search queries for a long time: it's basically autocomplete. As you start to type in a query, a menu pop-up presents you with guesses based on the most popular matching keyphrases in Google's database. You select the search query you want, and Google fetches the results for you.
• Google Instant takes that a step further: it actually produces search results as you type. In that sense, it's beyond autocomplete: it's AutoSearch, if you like. You never have to hit Return or click the Search button to start a search: Google does it for you, constantly updating its guesses and its results as you type.
• Everything on the page updates as you type: the organic (natural search) results as well as the PPC (pay-per-click) ads.
• Google Instant also brings other user interaction changes: you can now use the keyboard to navigate through the search results.

See Google Instant in action by clicking the videos below. The first is about the basics of Google Instant, the second is about the user experience improvements that Google Instant brings.

Google Instant: Fast facts

• Activated September 8, 2010.
• Available only when:
  • Users are signed in to their Google account
  • … or are searching at http://www.google.com (not a country-specific domain like google.co.uk)
• Can be switched off if a user doesn't like it; it then reverts to the old autocomplete style mode of operation.
• Works on all modern browsers — Internet Explorer is supported from v8 above.
• Will be switched off automatically by Google when it detects that the user's internet connection is very slow.
• Not yet available on mobile — but coming very soon.

Google's rationale for Instant is all about usability and user experience. Google claims that before Instant, the typical searcher took more than 9 seconds to enter a search term, and many searches took 30-90 seconds to type.

Google Instant: Assessing the impact

Google expects Instant to produce "increased user engagement" with Google's search services, including ads, because:

• It presents relevant results (rather than just suggested search phrases in the old style) to help users find information faster
• It gives users immediate feedback, helping them to refine searches more quickly and find results that are a better match for their needs.

 … It's now formally possible to have results (ads and natural listings) showing on the page that are completely irrelevant to the user's search.  

Looking a little deeper, we see the arrival of a new type of query and results page: what Google calls the "predicted query". A lot hangs on the workings of this new query type: although Google's guesses are often practically psychic because of the huge database of daily queries it's guessing from, it's now formally possible to have results (ads and natural listings) showing on the page that are completely irrelevant to the intended search.

Example: The user wishes to search for flow valve repair

• As she types the first letter f, the natural listings show a page of Facebook-related results.
• As she types fl, she's seeing Flickr listings.
• As she types flo, Google presents a page of Florida listings. The first ads, all related to Florida, appear.
• As she types flow, it's all about flowers, both the PPC and the natural search results.
• As she types the space after flow, flow-charting ads and listings are presented.
• It's not until she gets to flow va that relevant ads and listings start to appear.
  [You may see slightly different results depending on which Google domain you're searching from, but the principle is unaffected.]

Usability specialists and search marketers are wondering how these distractions and other fundamental changes to the search interaction model are likely to affect the user experience and SEO/PPC performance. Take the query-building mechanism — the process of the user drafting and choosing the terms of her search: with Instant we have, for the first time, search results dynamically influencing the query-building process. What you see as Google presents guessed results could actually change what you planned to type in — in fact, that's the whole point of Google Instant. It actively steers the search for you, and while you're free to accept or ignore, how many users will just go with Google's flow?

Google's official word is that SEO rankings won't change as a result of Google Instant, but that's a bit of a moot point in this context. Here are some of the top issues search marketers are studying:

• Are users going to be 'lazy' — by drifting towards the first remotely relevant results appearing from their first few keystrokes? This would suggest we see an increase in traffic from 2- and 3-word searches, and fewer from longer search queries. It would also tend to increase search failures and bounce rates as the searcher finds results not being specific enough.
• Or are searchers going to use the early SERPs to refine their search as they type, drilling down deeper as, perhaps, Google intended? That would tend to favour longer search queries — the long tail — at the expense of the shorter or head terms.
• Are we going to see a new kind of click, the distraction click, where the search for flow valve repair becomes a click for flowers: "Gosh yes, it's our anniversary on Friday!" Is the type-read-type model of Google Instant going to bewilder and distract slower typers, while annoying the faster ones?
• How many UK Googlers will even see Instant? Remember, unless UK users are searching at http://www.google.com, or are signed in at http://www.google.co.uk under their Google account, Instant won't even appear on their screens. (Estimates of the number of signed-in searchers range between 15–22%.)
• Do we need to start thinking of turning <Title> tags and meta descriptions into sales messages that will tempt searches to stop typing and click on the search result, without hitting Return? (Hitting Return would replace the guessed results with Google's normal results for what has been typed up to that point.) For example, a page title which might previously have said 32GB Micro SD card might now benefit from becoming more of a call to action — like 32GB Micro SD card – Buy now and save! — to tempt the user away from further keystrokes or the Return key.
• What are the implications for low-first-page search rankings e.g. #6–#10? Google Instant's intermediate SERPs — the ones that appear automatically during the typing phase of a search — will push some relevant results below the fold. Conversely, aren't positions #1 and #2 in the SERPs more important than ever before?
• How does Instant affect your keywording strategy for PPC? Some people think that Instant will bring a new focus on local keywords in PPC campaigns. That's because Instant may steer generic queries towards becoming geo-specific queries; hence, users may see locally focused ads.
• What's the impact of the new impression-counting mechanism? Google says that impressions will be counted when:
  • The user begins to type a query and clicks anywhere on the page (a search result, an ad, a spell correction, a related search).
  • The user chooses a particular query by clicking the Search button, pressing Enter, or selecting one of the predicted queries.
  • The user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of three seconds.
  • Google's own advice is that you keep an eye on your ad performance — which of course you or your search team are doing anyway.

A few very early and limited studies on the impact of Instant suggest that the impact is marginal — or, where present, showing a slight tendency to favour longer search terms at the expense of shorter ones.

Says Google: "Google Instant might increase or decrease your overall impression levels. However, Google Instant can improve the quality of your clicks since it helps people search using terms that more directly connect them with the answers they need."

It's early days yet — way too early to tell. It may take six months or a year for the impact of the Google Instant search model to show up as clear, actionable insights in your PPC and SEO activities.