It’s kind of hard to keep up with, isn’t it?

But keep up you must, certainly if you want your blog or other website to prosper and do well.  Because if people can’t find it, it won’t do well.

So what is Instant Search?

It’s heralded as a revolutionary shift in the way we search online. And it should make the best search engine better.  Certainly that’s Google’s view.

Instant Search means that, instead of needing to hit ‘enter’ to see your search results, they start to appear just as you start to type.  In effect, the search results ‘stream’ to your in near real-time. As you type, the results will change.

Will it change SEO as we know it?

Quite a lot of people say, YES.

What is on the face of it a positive step, even a ‘small change’ for Google, many fear as the end of traditional SEO.

The reality is that there’s not such thing a ‘traditional search engine optimization’ – it’s always a changing game, and you as a blogger or a webmaster need to be live to that.  And, if you really get under the skin of what instant search is, whilst it impact on the ‘user interface’ – that is, the Google ‘box’ and the experience of using it – Google’s core search engine technology is really not changing.  Importantly, it’s not changing for delivering ‘relevant results’, which is what Google is built on and what we as bloggers and website owners are interested in.

Ok, that’s comforting But will the search engine experience impact on marketing?

Now this is what’s really intriguing.

Imagine typing in “where can I get a new Mac”.

Well, in the new Google, it will update the search results as you type the words.  So, instead of definitely ending up with the results of “where can I get a new Mac”, you’ll start to see results for  all sorts of thing related to “where can…”, “where can I….”, “where can I get…”.  So, the user could end up with “where can I get a new dog”, “where can I see a new car”, as as they type.  So, with the ‘need to press enter to get results’ removed from the process, a user may well get diverted to other points of interest which appear sooner in the chain of the text typed into the box.

So, this is something to consider.  It really is.

Long tail keywords will be impacted upon

In the example above, the ‘long tail’ keyword is therefore more vulnerable.

Many SEO experts and online marketers use the long-tail keywords to focus upon niche markets.  In this sense, Google Instant Search could be something of a game changer.