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The new SEO: How Google Instant will impact online retail

The search giant has drastically changed the way it delivers search results. Will it change the way people find products online?

September 12, 2010 by James Bickers — Editor, Networld Alliance

Last week, search titan Google unveiled Instant Search, a staggering change to the way search results are delivered to users: The site returns results while the user types, without waiting for a click of the "Search" button, and it changes those results with each letter typed.

It immediately touched off klaxons and shrieks of despair across the Internet, with bloggers decrying it as "the death of SEO." The truth is much less dramatic than that, but Instant will instantly have an impact on retailers, notably those running paid search campaigns to drive traffic to their sites.

We spoke with Adam Riff, general manager of search with MediaWhiz, about the implications of Google Instant Search. MediaWhiz is an Internet marketing company with revenues of $150 million last year. The company's CEO is Jonathan Shapiro, former chief strategy officer for DoubleClick, which was acquired by Google.

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James Bickers: What are the implications of Google Instant for online retailers?

Adam Riff: There are a couple of impactful things. From a paid search perspective, people will start to see a lot more impressions than they're normally seeing. Unfortunately, this may be misleading for them. Whenever their ad is viewed for more than three seconds, an impression is going to be recorded, and you'll get weird queries popping up that really have nothing to do with what the user is searching for.

Let's say the company is Discovery Channel, and (the user) starts typing the word "discover," they're going to get ads for Discover Card on their way to typing Discovery Channel. So Discover Card will start getting impressions that are not relevant to the user's intent.

But once you expect that and you understand that it's going to happen and you readjust expectations, the job that you're doing really doesn't change. You're doing the same things that you've always done.

On the organic search side, your job does not change. You're building great content, great links, and you're making sure your architecture is sound, and can educate Google on what authority to give your site.

From a user perspective, I don't know if instant results are necessarily better results. I think users may see this as gimmicky, but you know what? Google has clearly tested this, and they're still testing it, so whether it lasts or doesn't, or comes out in another form, we'll wait and see. I don't think at this point in time it's going to have a major impact on retailers.

JB: Does this impact things beyond text — for instance, does it have implications for how retail sites need to be structured, navigationally?

AR: No, I don't believe it does.

JB: If a retailer is already using accurate descriptions for their products, are they going to see any effects from this?

AR: Retailers who are giving accurate descriptions probably don't need to make any changes. I think there may be some nuances down the road as to where you position keywords within the product description, or title tags, based off of how instant search evolves. But I think if you're doing a sound job of communicating to your users, I don't think there are any major adjustments that need to be made at this point.

JB: Do you anticipate consumer search behaviors changing in any meaningful way? Will this impact the way people find products online?

AR: I don't think it's going to influence the way users search. Google is already allowing users to opt out of this, and I think you'll find a lot of users will be turning it off. There may be a factor of annoyance. I don't think users are going to really be impacted from this, other than its gimmicky, it's fast, everybody loves speed. But the results can be wacky. There are weird search results as you type out a query. I don't think it will fundamentally change the way users search.

JB: What advice would you give online retailers in regards to Google Instant — are there any actions or steps that should be taken right now?

AR:Online retailers, if they're running a paid search campaign, should acknowledge that their impressions are going to go up. But I think they should reset their expectations and understand that in the end, users are going to fundamentally search the same way. If they're using best practices in paid search and SEO, then I don't think they need to change anything at this point. The jury is still out on this product.