Google Instant and the future of SEO
I was going to write a post about Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt being portrayed as evil on a couple of videos, but Google Instant was released yesterday, so I guess I should write something about that…
Announced yesterday from San Francisco, Google Instant looks to deliver results as soon as you start typing. Though us lot on the right side of the pond will have to sign into a Google account to make use of it for the time being.
My colleague Pete was quick to point out “that there will now be a dramatic shift to long-tail SEO across the industry.”
Is he right? Probably (annoyingly).
If you’re optimising for Plumber London then people will still be typing ‘plumber london’ but Google might suggest something about plums and the pluperfect tense.
It doesn’t. I just checked. It did suggest paypal, play, plusnet, plumb centre, plumbing, plumbers, plumber manor.
Instant probably means another bit of research on behalf of the SEO consultant to make sure all potential long-tail phrases/suggested searches are accounted for.
The effects on SEO
According to the Mashable reporter, Ben Parr, and his brief notes; Google make a point about optimisation.
In the questions and answer section Google’s Sergey Brin answered a question on SEO by saying ‘Basically it stays the same. It’s still the same results, it’s just adapting to behaviour.”
Matt Cutts, Google’s Web Spam Wizard, offered his thoughts on Instant:
“it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time…The ability to explore the query space and find out new things will inevitably lead to changes for SEO…SEO is in many ways about change.”
Cuttsy sounds likes he’s open to change, which is a good place to be. Since SEO started it’s been in a constant state of change most them minor, the search engines have a way of searching, some people exploit it others think it’s bad, then the search engines change or improve and the process starts again.
This is just another step in the SEO evolution.
September 9th, 2010
Thanks Rob for the compliment, Google Instant will bring a competitive edge to picking the correct keywords.