Monday, September 13, 2010

The Impact of Google Instant on Online Marketing

Google seems to have its own mysterious ways. In an effort to make its popular search engine more user friendly, it may have the potential to upset a small fragment of its advertisement ecosystem.
If you've lately used Google, you would have seen its latest innovation... the "Google Instant"... Google's predictive mind reader that begins to produce search results before you've finished typing the search 'keywords', just like the T9 text mode on your Nokia handset! Well, innovative must say...
Google end users may be a happier lot. However, when Search Engine experts dig deeper into this novel approach, there are a few surprises. Let us evaluate this new tool and its impact on PPC and organic campaigns.
A quick look at the new interface leads us to analyze its impact on Impressions.
Google Instant measures Impressions in 3 ways:
1) The Traditional impression model, wherein your website is displayed in search results as a reaction to a user keying in the completed search query phrase/keyword (e.g. by pressing "enter" or selecting a term from auto- complete).
2) The Google Instant Interface, where if the user begins to type a search query and then without completing the keyword/phrase clicks anywhere on the page based on the predictive results, an impression is counted. This includes clicking on a search result, a sponsored link, spelling correction or a related search.
3) The third way an impression is measured on Google Instant is when the user stops typing the search term and the search results are displayed for at least three seconds, an impression is counted.
It is expected that under the new Google Instant mechanism, there will be an increase in the amount of impressions received by the keywords. There is also a concern that new Search users will find it distracting to see the predictive results before they complete the search query term. As a result there may be a possibility of users clicking on the inappropriate websites resulting in higher bounce rates. Higher Bounce rates and poor Click through rates will again have a negative impact on the Google Quality score....forcing advertisers to increase their maximum cost-per-click (CPC) in order to be seen in higher positions in the search results. It may be too early to announce the demise of the "long tail keyword" but there is a possibility that the new Predictive system will drive away, rather distract the user from using longer tails!
Only time will tell how Google Instant will impact the Google Adwords framework of the millions of businesses who have advertised and prospered out of Google's original and marvelous search model.
Google Officials have quoted that this will have NO IMPACT on optimization for organic sites. Again, this will have to be carefully monitored as to what impact this will have on websites and their organic rankings.
Let's hope Google doesn't disappoint with this new avatar and pave way for Bing and Yahoo to score up!

About the Author :

RyzeUp Internet Marketing (www.ryzeup.com) is a boutique Search Engine Marketing Outsourcing SEO India Company that delivers high quality outsourced Search Engine Optimization, PPC, SMO, E-mail Marketing, Affiliate Management and Link Building Services to Digital Media and Internet Marketing firms worldwide.