Yesterday Google made yet another new change to their search engine… “Google Instant”.

What is Google Instant?

Google instant is a change in Google’s SERP page (Search Engine Results Page) that will instantly change your search results as you type in a search query. Go ahead and try it yourself, it’s amazing at how quickly it will bring up search results based on what you’ve typed in.

Google instant doesn’t change with every character you type into the query box however. Google instant uses the most relevant search query suggestion to pull search results.

What does this mean for your site?

More Long Tail Keyword Searches: This change in Google’s results page will effect a number of factors in your online search engine marketing. First, searchers are going to see results for more long tail keyword terms. If someone is typing in “Find a used car” and instead Google instant suggests “find a used car in my area” then those results will be displayed. This makes the end user’s search more specific, and it also makes it easier to rank for the search terms that are being searched.

This also means that your Adwords campaigns will need to be expanded. Long tail keywords are always recommended in an Adwords campaign, but by expanding your long tail keyword campaigns you will ultimately find even more cheap traffic than before.

More search impressions: As someone is typing in a search query into Google Instant, multiple search results will appear below the search box… and also multiple Adwords ads.  It’s too early to tell, but it seems to me like this will boost the number of impressions you get for your keywords, and drop your CTR (click through rate). This will not only effect your organic search stats, but also effect your PPC (pay per click) campaigns. After all, if you have a significantly lower CTR then your campaigns will drop in quality score, and your campaign cost will go up. As I mentioned, it is too early to tell if Google will take this into account, but if they don’t you can be sure that your impressions will be higher and your clicks lower.

How can you take advantage of this change?

Keyword research: In the past, keyword research could be accomplished using a number of keyword research tools including Google’s Adwords Keyword tool. Now, you have yet another option… Google Instant’s search page itself.

If you look back to all of the keywords that are currently converting for you, and then run them into Google Instant, you should find all sorts of suggestions as you type in your search query that aren’t currently in your search campaigns. These new long tail search terms should give you plenty of cheap clicks to build up your PPC campaigns, and eventually to expand your SEO efforts.

So is this a good thing? Or bad?

Generally I think that if something is good for the end user then it is good for everyone. A better user experience makes it easier to find relevant information, we as website owners just need to make sure that we also provide a good enough user experience to be relevant.