What is Google Instant?
There has been much debate over the last couple of week surrounding the release of Google Instant. For those of you that dont know, Google Instant is an update which allows users to browse search results as they type. According to the search giant, this has tremendous time saving benefits:
Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.
Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.
Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.
The question for optimisation specialists is: how will this impact on our work?
In our opinion, Google Instant places more emphasis on natural search, making us refine us skills to anaylse user behaviour (and adaptations over time). Search Engine Watch have published a good article on this, detailing "7 Reasons Why Google Instant Makes SEO Dead-on Relevant". Take a look at this article, which (as an ethical seo agency) we believe is pretty spot on :-).
