Google “Instant Search” – How will it affect my business?

Google recently launched its latest update to its main product, search. Touted by Google as a revolution it has seen luke warm responses from some industry analysis.

Google Instant Search throws you straight into the search results the moment you start typing and updates the search results as you type. Rather than go into detail, watch this short video which shows you how it works.

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After watching it, I thought…OK, it’s quick and cool but right now  it a new product that’s not going to knock the search engine industry sideways. The idea of Instant Search is to help you search faster and make it easier to find what you want; to predict what you are searching for and put it in front of you. Google uses personalisation (your previous searches) and data on the most popular searches to do this. As the technology gets more sophisticated the accuracy will improve.

You must be signed into your Google Account for this to work and users using iGoogle currently will not have access to this feature. You also have to be operating the latest browser version to get it work which leaves question, how many people will actually be using Google Instant?

The industry has gone wild is speculation, some even reporting that Search Engine Optimisation is dead! Let’s not get carried away, I mean you only have to look at the example of the Google Wave launch to see the possibility of a hype/nose dive of interest from a product release by Google.

How will it affect my business?

SEO real-estate has been reduced. The Google Suggest box now appears under the search box listing other potential search phrases. This may push the focus onto the paid listings, particularly for comparison or price driven searches. This is also going to mean that being number one for a search phrase in both paid and natural search is ever more important.

Action: Keep a focus on the search volumes for your shorter, more generic search terms. This could have a positive impact on your quality score as this may increase your Click Through Rate (CTR) but may also increase your daily spend. Test out increased positions on your top volume search phrases in paid and push hard in your natural search.

Reduce the reliance on long-tail keywords. There has already been a slow shift away from long-tail search phrases with the introduction of Google Suggest. Users are become lazier when it comes to searching and Google Instant is only going to make it easier for people to search by using the predetermined phrases presented to them. You’ll notice that you can easily flick through the suggested search terms using your up and down arrow keys making it much easier for users to try out a wide range of searches in seconds.

Action: Make sure you are listed highly for all variations of the relevant suggestions. Start typing your top keywords in and flicking through the relevant search phrases to make sure you are listed. If not, then add these keywords in as, at a minimum, exact search phrases.  It’s very likely that you will be listed for these as they will be your generic terms that you should be bidding against but it’s always worth checking.

Google Instant Impact

So Google Instant hasn’t changed the face of search yet. It’s not a revolution, but it is evolution. Lucky for you, you’re reading this article and are aware on Google Instant! That means you can start to monitor its impact and make changes accordingly. It’s an exciting change and one that will most definitely change the way we search, just not quite yet.

We’ve already started looking at our client’s reports, looking at the user experience whilst searching for generic phrases and making changes accordingly. Make sure you speak to your online marketing agency to do the same!

Please share with us your thoughts and experiences with Google Instant. Do you like it? Does it irritate and distract you? Have you seen any impact on your search engine marketing campaigns?

When people suddenly, years after it became mainstream, realised that search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) strategies could be joined together, these was a big fuss. Then everyone realised that it wasn’t anything significant, you just needed to ensure that your SEO team and PPC team were working together. Of course this becomes difficult if you run it across two different agencies or if the internal structure of that agency isn’t set up to do so.

Our belief will always be that there should be one “search strategy”. That person leading the strategy should know PPC and SEO inside out. But perhaps that’s a pipe dream at the moment, given the shortage of experience SEO/PPC people in the industry.

So, before we have even managed to get to grips with that, everyone is suggesting that we now focus on search and social, eeek!

So what do we do? What with Facebook Vanity URLs coming out, there has been a flurry of blog articles coming out advising to optimise your Facebook pages and twitter profiles. Great if you are a business to optimise you brand name. Chances are that you are already number 1.

So how can SEO and social media be used to help your business?

You don’t have to be an expert at both to do the basics:

• Set up social profiles – sign up to Facebook and Twitter. Both are free and are easy to set up.
  • Optimise Facebook – get fans, build interest, get your facebook vanity URL, link from your profile page to your website.
  • Optimise Twitter – get your twitter account and get it optimised for your business name .
• Blog - blogging is a great way of building interest around your business. Write articles around the latest industry news and optimise them well for key search terms and link out to other areas of your site.
• Create valuable content – this one is very important. Making interesting and relevant content for your audience will set you apart form the competition.
• Make your content portable – make any content you produce for your site shareable. Videos, whitepapers, gadgets, images, etc. are a great way to get people to link to your site. Getting inbound links is great for improving your rankings.
• Learn about SEO – the basics of social media are easy, it’s about being social online. But learning about how SEO works can help improve your basic knowledge.
• Get engaged – spend time with your customers, get to know them online. They will naturally want to tell others about you online. More links, better rankings.
• Get involved – get involved with other blogs and networks. Submit stories other than your own and be an active participant.
• Let everyone know – get yourself out there doing the following:
  • Submit your stories to Digg ,Reddit and Propeller
  • Get fans and share your stories on Facebook
  • Tweeter about your latest article
  • Get blogged about

There’s no golden rules here. You need to understand SEO and social media to pull it off. But word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool and if you create deep engagement with your customers/users then this will pay off. Once you have that it’s understanding how to harness the power of this through SEO, something you may want to consider using an search agency for.

This post was written by Jeremy Jacobs, owner of The Digital Consultant

A recent study from the IPA has found that the Cost Per Click (CPC) of paid search for brand terms on Google has risen from 6p to 29p from period January 2008 to March 2009. Click Through Rates (CTRs) for the same period have shown a decline from an average of 40% to 20%.

This raises serious questions around the effectiveness of paid search and whether it has become a commodity. There were a number of changes last year that impacted this, in particular the introduction of brand bidding in May 2008. This was a highly contentious issue which worried a lot of brands. We can now see the impact this has had; opening up the market has driven prices up. Brands are now having to defend their territory much more aggressively.

With more brands focussing their budgets into natural search services this year, it is evident that paid search might be seen to be less efficient. There may be a number of reasons for shifting budget to natural search, but our stance has always been to ensure you develop a solid “search” strategy, which means building natural and paid search campaigns together. This, of course, is best done in one agency as their teams can work closely side by side.

Our advice here would be not to panic. Things to remember are:

• Ensure that you are protecting your brand online. Check you have coverage from both natural and paid search for your key brand terms to reduce competitor voice.
• Chances are that for most companies, bidding on your brand terms is an inefficient strategy. This should be a last resort for a big brand with a lot of budget to burn, as they should be focussing on keywords which provide a better return on investment (ROI).
• Monitor the performance of your brand terms closely. Check your own trends for the year and see if this is really the case.

Written by Jeremy Jacobs, owner of The Digital Consultant

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