Well, well, well - The boys and girls at the big G never fail to impress and today is no exception. Google Instant has now gone live which shows search results as you type a query into the search bar - why have Google done this? It's quite simple - users read quicker than they type, hence delivering much quicker results (saving in some cases between 2-5 seconds).

In our opinion, why Google Instant is so invaluable to searchers is that it helps them to formulate a better search query by providing instantaneous feedback - again, improving a users search experience, making those very precious long-tail keywords become even more important to an online business and their keyword arsenal.

So how is Google Instant going to affect SEO? Punctuation, punctuation, punctuation! We must remember that Google Suggest requires the user to actually select the alternate suggestion from Google's index, whereas now for example, you were to type in: Cheap Womens Shoes (without the apostrophe in womens) Google will instantly show results for Cheap Women's Shoes - and the competing sites for these terms are very different. SEO's must now use punctuation religiously in long tail keywords if they are going to be successful in retaining conversions - otherwise, some may find themselves in deep water!

So, we've had Google Caffeine, now Google Instant - what's next? Google Latte?

Posted: 09/09/10 07:53