So, it’s been 12 days since Google Instant arrived and changed the visual face of Google’s search results page.  Still reeling from the addition of a sidebar which helps searchers customise their search results to target specific date periods, verticals and categories; searchers are now able to real-time results pages based on the prediction that Google makes as they input their search.

The initial reaction was a cry of horror from the SEO community as all sorts of crack pots (who are not getting a link from us) made wild street preacher like predications of this being “the end of SEO as we know it”.  There has been much debate since about the effect that Google Instant will have on the long and short-tail keyword variations, with a real mixed bag of ideas.

Our Initial Thoughts on Google Instant

The initial thoughts of the SEO team here at MEC was that Google Instant would not last long and in 6 months would end up in the same file as Google Wave, Sidewiki and Answers.  We also had issues with usability aspects, who really wants actions happening away from the eyes focus?  There is something kind of spooky about it!

The biggest problem is the usability factor. It's against usability to have aspects actioning away from the eyes focus, the search box.

The Proof of the Pudding

But, to get a real idea of how Google Instant is really going to change (if at all) the SEO playing field, all the conjecture and forum chat in the world won’t help you.  To figure that out you need hard data and that’s what we decided to do, look at the stats!  We got a big help when we found this blog post from Brett Snyder at SEER Interactive which includes a download of a splendid spreadsheet which makes the whole comparison process too easy to not try yourself.

Google Instant: The Test

Using data from searchers who were logged into their Google account (as these are currently the only people able to see Google Instant results) we compared 12 days worth of keyword searches from 5 sites, this totalled about 10,000 searches.

When we aggregated the results from all of these sites we saw this set of results:

Total Keyword Result across all sites

After thinking about it for a bit we decided this wasn’t really the most accurate way to do it as some of our test sites are more prone to long-tail keywords and some were the opposite, so we decided to look at the average percentages across all sites and the data came out quite similar:

Average Percentages Across all Sites

Conclusion

This data is a little inaccurate as these are only searches from logged in users.  There is debate over whether logged in users are by their nature more search savvy.  We estimate logged in searchers to make-up between 16% and 22% of all searchers so until we see Google Instant for the masses it is hard to say how Google Instant will affect the short and long-tail.

What we can see is that Instant isn’t having a dramatic effect on the single keyword searches as many people did think.  The largest effect seems to be on the 7 keyword plus area which has seen the biggest rise. 

As people adjust to the change, it may be seen that these stats are impacted to a greater degree.  More than that we are looking to progress the research over the coming weeks and months – using a much larger data set.

Until we see Google Instant for the masses it is hard to say how Google Instant will affect the short and long-tail.

Next steps for the test

We’re going to continue to build on this data as we get further down the line and we have more stats to work with, but for us the most interesting observations will come when we see a full roll out.