Google Instant: Death of SEO?

Earlier today, Google unveiled the next evolution of its search engine. Considering that Google searches account for about 85% of the worlds search engine traffic, even small tweaks are headline news.  But Google is calling this latest development “… a quantum leap for search.” So the buzz surrounding this is going to be massive. But some of the doomsday SEO people are getting a little bit nuts.

What is Google Instant?

With the ‘old’ Google, you typed a search query and then clicked the ‘search’ button to begin returning results. Refining your search meant performing a series of individual queries to narrow the results. Google did prompt users with hints, but each query still resulted in its own unique results.

With Instant, Google tries to predict what you are searching for before you even finish typing. The search page is refreshed with dynamic results in real time based on the characters you’ve typed so far. So instead of browsing pages of results, you know in a fraction of a second if your search is on-target. (Google claims to save its users 11 hours every second with the new service.) The effect is almost instant feedback that seemingly reads your mind.

How does it work?

Google has apparently reworked their entire search mechanism to facilitate this feature. A combination of indexed pages and cached searches allows Google to predict what you’re searching for and selectively narrow and prioritize results. Then these results are updated in real time using AJAX.

Is this the ‘Death of SEO’?

There is already growing group of ‘sky is falling’ types freaking out and proclaiming that Google Instant will be the ‘Death of SEO’. This is simply not true. Let’s look at a few knee-jerk reactions you’re sure to hear and why they don’t hold water:

1. My content is optimized for the ‘old’ Google! When you cut through the whole mess of how Google is now returning the results, the relevance of those results is still determined by an algorithm. And we don’t know any more or less about the ultra-secret algorithm than we ever have before. So everyone is still making educated guesses.
2. Using Google’s suggestions will lead to less unique searches. The reality is that only about 20% of Google searches are truly unique. As much as we’d like to believe we’re special, most queries are used over and over. And odds are that if you want your website to rank high in results, you will be optimizing for one of these terms anyway. This just expedites the process for the user.
3. People will only ever see the top results. It’s true that people may be more likely to only scan top results, but they likely will be doing so for multiple iterations of their search– meaning more total results. And if they are not satisfied, simply clicking the ‘search’ button provides the classic paginated results.
4. No one will see the ‘same’ web anymore. No one has seen the ‘same’ web on Google for a looong time, if ever. Google has long been caching the search histories of its users in an effort to refine results. And I would guess it does not end there. Just based on the data available through Google analytics, I’d bet searches account for things like location, OS, browser, connection speed and other factors to create a profile of the user.

Take that, Peyton Manning

What does this mean for web marketing?

For all its missteps, Google has always been motivated by providing the best user experience. This is why, as best as anyone can tell, the search algorithm has always rewarded content marked-up using HTML best-practices. That is why, here at Manning, we’ve always been a bit suspicious of companies promising incredible results from their SEO. We believe strongly in making sure all of our sites offer the content audiences want, and that they are created with industry best-practices. For us, SEO is a natural result of doing our jobs well. So you won’t see Manning running around screaming, ‘The sky is falling!” anytime soon.

It’s true that some sites may suffer in Google Instant results. But my guess is that this is much more likely to happen to sites optimized by snake oil salesmen trying to game the system than to those who strive to present valuable content and clean markup. And if those sites suffer, the web will end up a better place.

My brief experience with Google Instant has, so far, been very positive. But we will be sure to monitor the impact of this change as it develops.