Google rolled out Instant yesterday, a service that suggests search phrases as you type and the search results mysteriously appear and change as search terms gets longer. And all this without you having to hit the grey SEARCH button! â€Technological feat†echoed one analyst, â€Game changer†said another, â€Cannot be mimicked by competition†came from another corner (if you were following search engines closely it was the other way round for the last several months). Google claims that â€the typical; searcher takes 9 seconds to type in a search query and we saw many example of searches that took 30-90 seconds to type†(emphasis is mine). Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search as the claim goes on. A research report last year concluded that usually two searches burn enough energy to make a cup of coffee. Is the Instant search greener or otherwise? But that is a topic for another day. How will Instant impact the search engine businesses specially those that rely on Search Engine Marketing of pay-per-click advertizing and those that depend on their ranking in organic search results? Since search results appear while you are typing in your query, it is possible that the paid ads will change as the query length changes (understandable). However what you see is that the ads change even with suggestions that appear mystically (in the words of Marissa Mayer not mine) before a user has completed typing in the query! End of the Long Tail? SEM advertisers who rely on the long tail may be in for a surprise, as they may see fewer visitors clicking through while their Click Thru Rate may not have dropped significantly. Reason †it is not unlikely that a searcher will stop on seeing the results after typing in first 1 or 2 terms (or by hitting the space bar). Consequently it is likely that 1or 2 words long keywords (typically known as Head) will become more expensive to buy simply because results from these will appear first no matter whether the searcher has signaled her intention to begin search (by hitting the search button). The Tail will disappear unless the searcher has waded through the unintended results pulled up by the search engine! Is this a subtle way of passing control from searcher to the search engine? Do people type in more than 1 or 2 keywords? Google has claimed that over 54% of all search queries they see are more than 3 words! Hitwise places this at 35%. Clearly in the Google’s claim it must be these longer search terms that take between 30 -90 seconds. How does this play with another stat from Google that 1 out of 5 queries each day have not been seen in the last 90 days if at all! Will be interesting to see how Instant will handle those. Finally the size does matterâ€.in Google’s case shorter the better!
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