Google Instant – Could This Be The Death Of Longtail Keywords?

Today Google unveiled it’s latest innovation in the Search Engine market with “Google Instant“. Essentially it gives real time search results, as you are typing. The idea has been floating around for a while now, and Google has implemented it in previous projects. Just think back to when Google Wave was alive, the person you were chatting to could you typing, as you typed it. This turned out to be a bit of a hazard, but Google have now chanced their arm at trying it for their flagship product.

Google Instant isn’t available everywhere yet, but if you go through this URL : http://www.google.com/ncr , You should be able to reach it. Have a quick play around before continuing on with this article. I fiddled around with it alot to try and see how my searches would change over time.

Had your play? Ok Good.

Now something that I noticed straight off the bat, was that I typed a couple of words. And then watched what came up. Only then did I start moving on to complete my entire phrase. For example, off the top of my head, say I was searching for “Buy Cellphones New Zealand Panasonic”. Obviously that isn’t a phrase that makes alot of sense, but it is a jumble of keywords. Usually this is how I search for things. I just type a bunch of keywords trying to narrow down the selection, instead of a long sentence.

Now the interesting thing was, I typed in “Buy Cellphones New Zealand” first. That was it, I did not add in Panasonic on the end to begin with. I watched what came up. If I saw a shop that I knew, or I saw the word Panasonic in any of the listings. I didn’t bother continuing on with the phrase and simply clicked through because I had found what I wanted. Now the difference here, is that I can say with 99% confidence, that if I had been using traditional Google where results were not live, I would have added in Panasonic. Infact, I probably would have added in the model number that I was looking for aswell.

So what’s the problem? I found my search item in less keywords, with less time taken to input all the keystrokes. Good right?

Sort of. The problem is now, that think about how many people are now NOT searching for the full phrase. How many people are now simply moving to the shortest phrase possible, because they can see the results as they happen. Long keywords (Or Longtails), are phrases that have many (Usually over 3) words in them, that usually have very little competition. It is pretty much every SEOers job to try and find these longtails with no competition, but alot of searches, and get ranking for them fast. Ofcourse we also go for larger keywords eventually, but these longtails are what really drive the SEO world.

But now with Google Instant, there is no longtail. No one is searching for a long keyphrase. Why would they? They can get the exact results they needed in less time.

I think this is what alot of people seem to mis-understand about Google. Google has always been, and forever will be, about the end user. If the end user is getting the results they were looking for (Which in my example I did), then that is Google’s mission complete. Now where do you and every other SEO come in? Well you are ofcourse trying to “Game” the system. I put quotes around the word Game because in a way, you are trying to manipulate the system in favor of your sites. Whether this is White, Black or Grey hat doesn’t really matter. In this day and age, Google is using more and more new technology and tactics, that take SEO out of the hands of people wanting to manipulate the results. And more into the hands of the everyday user.  Using their previous search patterns, and technology like Google Instant, Google is slowly taking the power away from the SEO’s.