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Last night Google officially announced the launch of their faster than ever search feature, Google Instant, which serves lightning fast live result updates to users of the UK’s most popular search engine.  The speed at which Google Instant serves results is testament to their dedication to speeding up the internet (or at exponentially multiplying their Adwords revenue).

We discussed this up and coming change to searching in our blog last week and it has been strongly hinted at in Google’s twitter feed over the last couple of days.

The instantaneous results take into consideration past consumer searches, your location and past searches (personalisation) when predicting what you are searching for.  Currently, only available on the most recent version of web browsers, the results are served based on a partially typed query, which then adapts as your search query word or phrase develops.

For example, “bestival” shows at the top of results for “bes” being the most likely result that I am looking for (remember personalisation is a factor) followed by “best buy”, “best western” and so on.

Users in US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia using the latest browser versions (Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8) should automatically see Google Instant results.  Based on current browser version statistics for the UK, around 56% of UK users could potentially see Google Instant results.  If over the past couple of days you have seen the swirling dot and grey logos on the Google Search homepage then your browser is compatible and if you are not seeing instant results and want to jump into the river, lest you get left behind, you can activate it here. On the other hand you can also turn the feature off either by disabling the auto-complete feature in your browser settings, changing the Google Instant setting in the dropdown to the right of the search box or by changing your settings for Google search.

How Will Google Instant Impact Natural Search

Consumer Search Behaviour
On face value we could expect that the functionality of Google Instant will impact consumer search patterns. While partially dependent on browser versions the instant results might prompt consumers to change how they search.  Being able to ‘preview’ the results for their selected search term, users may change their query mid-way upon seeing that the results aren’t serving the sites or pages that they are looking for or expect to find.  This may be especially true of high volume, generic terms where meaning or consumer intentions are subjective.

In the same vain, the nature of searches consumers use along their purchase journey may change and long tail volume could be affected by serving users with results that they want before they have typed in the entire query phrase, thereby potentially stunting the expansion of long tail search phrases and pushing up the volumes of the suggested phrases instead.

Rankings
Google have clearly said that natural search results are still based upon Google’s main algorithm for rankings.  The Instant suggestions box does eat into the most valuable area of page 1 SERPs, reducing the number of results that appear above the fold.  This reiterates the importance of compelling page tiles and meta descriptions for encouraging users to click on your site result.

Analytics
Based upon information for the Google Analytics handling of Instant searches, the referring keyword shown would not be the partial phrase but the whole suggested phrase that resulted in a successful SERP click-through. To track partial query phrases as a result of Google Instant the guys over at Webdistortion have compiled a nifty, advanced filter that is ripe for the testing.

We will be monitoring how Google Instant affects both natural and paid search, including the effect on impressions, CTRs and account performance as a whole. Our very own Jonathan Dunkley will be following on from this post with an in-depth look at the effect on paid search.