Will Google's 'Instant' Results Affect Your Bottom Line?

Google have released a gushy introduction video and further details can be found at http://www.google.com/instant 

What is Instant?

If you're a regular Googler then you'll probably have noticed suggested terms appearing in a drop-down underneath the search box as you type for some time now. Instant takes it one step further and automatically shows you results for the top suggestion.

Here's an example:

I type the letter 'd', and the following phrases are suggested - 'debenhams', 'daily mail', 'dvla', 'dictionary' and 'd'. The phrase 'debenhams' is auto-completed in the search box; the 'd' in black and the rest of the suggested phrase in grey. Google is also showing me results for 'debenhams', even though I haven't hit any other key or clicked anywhere.

 

I add an 'o' to the 'd' and now Google suggests 'dorothy perkins', 'dominos', doctor who', 'download' and 'do'. I'm now seeing results for 'dorothy perkins'.

How the Search Process works

• If the top suggested phrase is correct, then all you need to do is to click one of the results on the page.
• If you want to see results for the other suggested phrases, then using your down arrow key will change the results page.
• If a suggested phrase is part of what you're looking for (let's say I'm looking for 'dorothy perkins brighton opening hours') then hit the right arrow key or TAB to accept the suggested phrase, and Google will then suggest more terms. Keep adding letters / hitting the arrow keys until you get what you want.

To complete the search I just mentioned I used eight keystrokes instead of thirty-eight. 

Yahoo thought of it first!

Although Google have trumpeted this as a major innovation (the full launch video is 90 minutes, of which roughly two thirds is self-congratulation) Yahoo thought of it in 2005 and Bing thought of it in 2009. The achievement here is an engineering one; delivering these results on a large scale from a huge index at high speed.

I have a website / I advertise on Google. How does this affect me?

It's too early to say just yet. Instant is not being used that widely, and appears to still be being tested. However, there are early signs that this will affect those using Google AdWords, will change traffic levels across many websites, and also change how people use Google.

Instant and AdWords

For those not familiar with AdWords, here's a quick introduction.

You write an advert for your website, which is shown (this is called an 'impression') when people search on Google for phrases that you have indicated you want to be found for.

When your ad is clicked you pay a fee. You set the cost per click you want to pay on a per phrase basis.

Ads appear at the top and to the right of Google's regular results. How prominently your ad appears for any phrase is determined by how much you bid, but also by what's called 'click through rate' or CTR.

CTR (shown as a percentage) is the ratio of clicks to impressions. An ad with a a good CTR for a certain phrase may be shown above others even if the set cost per click is lower. This is because 5 clicks at 40p makes Google £2.00, whereas 3 clicks at 60p makes them £1.80. A bad CTR will also mean that you have to raise your cost per click.

How Will Instant Affect AdWords Impressions?

With Instant, if a results page is shown for three seconds then the ads on that page will be considered to have received an impression. Depending on how fast people type - or how they use these new results - then that could mean a lot more impressions, which in turn could mean lower CTR.

How will This Affect Advertising Costs?

Many two word phrases are not only self-contained but also part of longer three or four word phrases. These tend to be more expensive with a lower CTR. Most AdWords users don't really know how to focus their campaigns and Google's system makes it easy to spend money and bid on shorter, more popular but less relevant terms. Impression data is shown in the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to potential advertisers. Perceptions of increased demand among less knowledgeable advertisers could drive bids up for these already more expensive terms.

Instant and 'Long Tail' Terms

Most searches are what are known in the industry as 'long tail' (more specific) terms; in fact every month 1 in 5 search queries are unique. This means that for every popular and competitive search phrase there are lots of related less popular and less competitive phrases.

Only well-established websites, businesses with big budgets, or seriously well-informed people with plenty of time on their hands can compete for many phrases on the internet. But, because there are so many other phrases used every month, smaller businesses or newer websites can get traffic and convert it to business from less popular phrases. This leads to a diverse web and a healthy business community.

However, recent changes to Google's algorithm over the Summer have meant that for specific long tail queries, more relevant pages on smaller sites are being pushed out of the results by less relevant pages on bigger sites.

Whilst Instant isn't an algorithm change it will, I think, make this situation worse by subtly encouraging people to click results for suggested (i.e. more popular and therefore more competitive) phrases rather than type in their own complete phrase. More traffic will flow to sites that rank for these terms, less to sites that don't. There's a danger that small businesses will be increasingly squeezed off Google - and remember, almost 92% of UK searches are done using Google right now.

Instant, User Behaviour and a Vicious Circle

I've already discussed the fact that more traffic will flow to sites that rank for suggested terms. As perception trickles through the community, competition will increase for those terms.

I also mentioned above that I think that Instant might subtly encourage people to click suggested terms. If you search 'normal' Google you'll see that there are usually ten suggestions. However, Instant only uses five. That's half the choice.

What I haven't addressed yet is where these suggestions come from. It's not certain, but the suggestions dataset is probably put together mainly using

• completed search queries,
• terms that people bid on in AdWords, and  
• website content.

The more people start using the suggestions as search terms, the more advertisers will need to target them, and the more website content will be focused around them. This will then in turn strengthen the suggestions still further, and so on. There's a potential for diversity of content - and diversity of intent also - to be lost.

I'm seeing reports from US webmasters (where Instant is more widespread) that page views per visitor are significantly down. This indicates that, having arrived on a website on a suggested phrase, the searcher is not really getting what they were looking for.

If searchers have to return to Google to do another search then Instant has not saved them any time; rather it has helped them to waste their time.

Surfers vs Searchers

The thing that worries me most about this change is that it could make searchers into surfers.

Someone who goes to Google to search for a product is likely to be interested in buying it. If Instant shows them lots of related things, how interested are they likely to be in any of them? There is to my mind a fundamental difference in intent between expressing a desire to find something in particular, and selecting from a list of possible options.

As a search marketer, this difference concerns me, because it weakens the USP of search marketing: the potential to place a business in front of people actively looking for what it provides right that instant.

Fix the results, then worry about how fast they are

As a searcher, I find Google Instant mildly interesting. However, it's only the icing on the cake of results - and what bothers me increasingly about Google lately is not how fast or flashy their results are, but how closely they relate to what I typed in the search box.

A lot of this is to do with Google's attempts to guess user intent. In my case at least, they are not getting this right very often at all. I find myself increasingly using Bing, and I'm not alone.

I also hear talk in the webmaster community that Bing traffic converts better than Google traffic. This can only be because Bing is delivering more relevant results for at least a number of searches.

It was not that long ago that no one had heard of Google and most people used Yahoo to search. Now Google is on top and Bing is the underdog, but this could change.

A fast response and a simple effective user interface were contributory factors to Google's success in the first place, but they weren't deal breakers.

The deal-breaker was the quality of the results. That quality has slipped drastically of late, and Google Instant is certainly not going to improve them.