I saw a random tweet tonight that had me interested – so I clicked through to see what all the fuss was about. As we know – Google likes to roll out random small tests to random users in an effort to constantly improve their search algorithms and the way search works. I’ve seen several of these tests in action – but this one intrigued me a little bit more then the others. This is a video shot by an SEO consultant.
I wouldn’t really say that Google is entirely original in this – I knew that I had seen it before so I went out looking for it. You can see that it’s been done before over at http://www.istartedsomething.com/livesearch. Obviously Google will make a much larger impact however – so it’s interesting to think about.
I’m wondering what the effects that this could have on marketers and brands are – and a few things come to mind right off the bat. Based on watching the video – it looks really distracting and I’m not sure that it would improve user experience at all. There are all sorts of organic results and ads flying past the users eyes – do you think that any of them will catch their attention before they reach the final page? How will this effect your ads impression count and thusly your CTR and QS?
I know that users are easily distracted – but I can’t see them stopping and click on an entirely unrelated ad to what they were looking for too often – however I can see them skipping right past related ads because they typed in another letter and it disappeared.
They would have to come up with some way to judge impressions – it can’t be an impression if the search barely even loaded before the user kept typing.
What do you guys think? Will Google actually implement this change? I don’t see the use in it personally – but I’m sure there are some differing opinions out there. Let’s hear them.
About the Author
I sometimes ignore the auto-complete feature of Google as I find them distracting. In case of words that have mostly later alphabets, it’s pointless anyway as the alphabets matching the ones in your word are so far at the bottom of the drop-down list that it’s faster to just type your word out itself.
#MeNoLikey
great read
I will only use the auto feature to get other keyword ideas then use the tips you gave us in your Ebook you gave on keyword research to discern if they are worth while to target or not.
This autocomplete is gonna have bad effect on the CTR, and bring in more competition.
Well this feature is now live. I personally think it’s pretty cool, but I don’t think it will ultimately change much. There may be some cases where it would become more advantageous to rank well for shorter search terms. When someone is searching for a longer phrase they might notice something applicable before they finish typing.
I had checked this , its shows results from Twitter and Tweet Me ,, Now you check who tweeted your Twitter
There has to be a new way of calculating impression after Google live search. It has destroyed my adward campaigns. Now, I am not able to know the correct conversion ratio.
Yeah Its call Google Instant Search .. As well as Google also launched Real time Search
Perhaps its features could be used to be an advantage. Based on the other possible results that are generated while the user types your desired keyword, you could put up some more sites to take advantage of those intermediate results too.
I have had Google Instant disabled for the most part and I think so have most of the people I know. It just seems like such a distracting feature. It’s more likely to make you forget what you were searching about in the first place. It’s still impressive how fast it works though.
I will only use the auto feature to get other keyword ideas