At Robmark Interactive, we are constantly striving to learn the latest and greatest on search engine optimization for our web clients, as it is continually changing and evolving. Yesterday, as we’re sure many of you have read, Google announced the launch of its new search interface, Google Instant. Google describes this as “a new search enhancement that shows results as you type.” Google Instant will allow users to scan search results while they’re typing them based on the top predicted results. Google estimates that this will cut down on the amount of time a person spends searching by an average of 2-5 seconds per search and 11 seconds per hour.
So what does this mean for SEO? A whole lot, actually, depending on how you look at it. While some people are predicting the end of SEO as we know it, others are seeing an infinite amount of possibilities in this industry. Google Instant will certainly shift some SEO strategies for those relying on both organic SEO methods and pay-per-click methods. Users will now only need to look at the first three to five results at the top of the page. If they don’t see what they’re looking for, they’ll simply adjust their search term(s) instead of scrolling down the page to keep looking or going to the next page. That means that search results will be more personalized and search terms will be more specific. Keywords, for example, will now be more like key phrases. The immediate implication is that now more than ever websites must contain unique and relevant content that directly answers their users’ queries. It will be interesting to see how the SEO industry continues to progress as Google continues to provide users with a better, and now faster, user experience. Google Instant is just the beginning.