The release of Google Instant last Wednesday caused quite a stir in SEM circles. Some so called “experts” announced the imminent “death of SEO” but most people recognised that Google’s new direction was more of a user interface change than a completely new system. Having said that Google Instant is likely to have a big impact as it is rolled out around the world. Below are some of the changes we may see over the coming months.

1. Users may see a greater number of irrelevant results.

Google Instant continually updates its results as you type based on what you may be looking for according to Google’s data. This means that users may (briefly) see lots of irrelevant results before they find what they are actually looking for. As Craig Danuloff points out on Search Engine Land this can make it feel like you are performing multiple searches where you used to only need one:

At this point I’ve typed 8 characters (including the space) and been shown five different sets of results, none of which have a thing to do with the subject I’m looking for. I’m sure they’ve all been statistically sound probabilities. But as a user it feels a little bit like talking to someone who won’t let you finish a sentence even when you have not provided enough data to reasonably make any response.

While users are probably more likely to find what they are looking for now, they will see more of what they are not looking for along the way. The effect may be reduced when the user’s search history is taken into consideration.

2. Search patterns may become less (or more) diverse.

Since the launch of Google Suggest we have got used to Google predicting what we are looking for. We are now comfortable typing in the beginning of a phrase and allowing Google to fill in the gaps.

Now that the results for Google’s suggestions are displayed below the search box it seems that users may be more likely to find what they are looking for via a popular keyword than via a less generic keyword. If a user starts to type a long tail keyword they may find what they are looking before before they finish typing. The result could be increased search volumes for generic keywords (if they are picked up by Google Suggest) and less searches for less generic and longer keywords. On the other hand users may continue to type until they see what they are looking for leading to higher volumes for longer keywords – time will tell.

3. Users may reject Google Instant.

In his write up about Google Instant on the LBi Blog my colleague Simon pointed out that not all of Google’s innovations have been well received:

When Google recently promoted their homepage backgrounds, such was the underestimation of the dislike for the new ‘feature’ that Google was not prepared for the backlash of disgruntled users. Not only this, but other products and services have failed to deliver, notably in the social arena where ‘Google Wave’ and ‘Google Buzz’ were not well received by the online community.

If users don’t like Google Instant they can disable the service or switch to a different Search Engine. If enough users reject Instant Google is likely to change back to their old user interface. Even if this doesn’t happen some users will continue to use browser based search boxes or browsers which do not support Google Instant.

4. Google Instant may make time run backwards.

As Big Mouth Media’s blog post on the topic pointed out Google Instant is expected to save users between two and five seconds per search query. Google says that this means they will save their worldwide users 11 hours per second. If my Maths are correct this means that Google Instant will actually be moving backwards through time.