Everyone is talking about Google Instant; the new way for Google to display results.
Image from Zenera on Flickr
The basics are covered in many places:
- The Google Analytics Blog
- Official Announcement
- Google Instant and PPC
- SEMantiks also talks about the effect on PPC
- Rishil’s opinion is concise, insightful and to the point
I want to talk a bit less about the implementation and a bit more about the implications. It is too early to say anything for sure but here are my thoughts on how the new Google UI will alter the PPC landscape.
1. There will be more impressions
Impressions on Google Instant are counted differently to normal. Even thought Google are not recording impressions willy nilly (the user must interact with the page or wait 3 seconds) the total number of AdWords adverts served will increase. The interesting aspect is how these extra impressions will be distributed rather than if there will be extra impressions or not (they have to go somewhere).
2. The number of clicks will increase
This one is much more of a guess than point 1. I can’t see the number of AdWords clicks dropping so it will either stay the same or increase. I’m going to go with “increase” for two reasons:
- I can’t imagine Google making a change that hits their bottom line
- Organic results are pushed even further down the page.
3. CTR will blah, blah, blah
Who cares? Aside from quality score implications (discussed below) who gives a shit about CTR? Joking aside, I think this one will go both ways. On the one hand, there will be more impressions so CTR may go down. On the other hand the page interaction criteria for an impression to count introduces a sampling bias in what is counted as an impression.
4. Quality Score
Make up some quality score numbers and perform the quality score calculation as it is described by Google. Now reduce the score for you and the you-1 ranked ad by 10% and repeat the calculation. Your CPC has not changed! The point I am trying to make it that I believe it is your quality score relative to other advertisers that matters. If the new interface penalises everyone equally then there is nothing to worry about. Of course, any advertiser who can find away to avoid a drop in quality score when everyone else is failing … ;-)
5. Redefining the “Head”
A lot of people are talking about bidding on “stem” queries in order to capture searchers earlier in their query. For example an advertiser selling widgets may bid on “wikipedia” or “widnes” because these searches are triggered before the user has finished typing “widgets”. I don’t see this as being a massive game changer; it is no different to an advertiser selling black nike football boots bidding on “football boots”. The top of the head has been made bigger (the head now has a “hat”) but that is all. The game is still the same, but the pitch is larger.
6. The shorter, fatter tail
I expect to see the number of different queries drop as people are steered down well defined search paths. However, it is important to remember that the suggestions aren’t set in stone so that discarding a keyword because it doesn’t appear in the suggestion box may mean that opportunities are missed later on.
7. CPCs
CPCs may increase on head keywords that are stem phrases for valuable queries. Morrissons may start paying more for their brand terms in order to stay ahead of people trying to target people looking for mortgages. For keywords in the tail CPCs should fall; aggregating traffic from a larger number of search queries into one query will result in a small amount of inefficiancy that wasn’t there before; this should cause CPCs to fall (use the comments to correct me if I’m wrong). What I think will actually happen is that a larger number of advertisers bidding on a smaller number of keywords will cause CPCs to increase.
Totally agree with your points Richard, especially #4 regarding Quality Score. A lot (and there is a lot) of posts/ people out there seem to forget that the change will affect everybody in the landscape and not just them. Like you say, the trick will be minimising the drop in QS or even better avoiding it all together! :)
This article has really cleared up the impact Google Instant will have, so thanks!
Isn’t this all about item #7 … CPC’s will increase especially on the stem phrases. The user experience is probably better with GI however this will almost certainly increase Google’s revenue. Effectively Google is trying to funnel user queries towards a smaller subset of keyword phrases. In turn advertisers are then forced to bid higher amounts for these terms .. its very clever.
Regarding #2 it will be interesting to see how the traffic split between PPC ad’s and organic listings will change. Google are clearly trying to shift this towards PPC (one wonders why !!).
ARTiSAN makes an excellent point about how Google is funnelling users towards a smaller set of queries.
This is pretty interesting for other reasons as well; It will be a lot easier for Google to monitor the quality of organic results for a limited set of queries.
Perhaps they are trying are trying to train users now rather than webmasters.
Hi Richard,
I think you’re right that the change will see more people steering down well-defined search paths. And although I agree that people can still type whatever they like, my first instict is that users will largely learn to accept the searches they are presented with, and limit their search creativity.
It’s something I recently wrote about on my blog:
http://www.alanmitchell.com.au/discussion/the-laziness-of-google-instant/
Prior to Google Instant, there was just a white screen, and minimal distractions. The user would typically finsih searching what they intended to search for. Now there are dynamically-changing engaging search results, screaming out for the user’s attention.
This could make people lazy with their search creativity, so we might see the long-tail limited to Google’s Autocomple suggestions.
Cheers,
Alan
Hi Alan,
I think I agree with what you’re saying. Just out of interest how do you define the long tail? (sounds like a stupid question; context below)
I think if you define the long tail by search query length then the volume of long tail traffic might not change much. Although you make a good point about users being distracted and turning what would have been a long tail query into a head/body query.
I prefer to think of the long tail in terms of search volume for a query. I have no idea how to define an exact cut off but I’d say that a query that only gets 1-2 clicks per month was definitely long tail. With this definition I think a lot of long tail queries will be lumped together into one predicted query thereby making that query no longer part of the tail (so to speak).
This is turning into a bit of an essay. Either way the tail is under threat
@Richard – great review of Instant. I never found use in short tails as they were never good for conversions. (Traffic yes, convesions no.) I’m curious (ie dreading) to see how this affects my long tail and exact match.
Someone on another board made a really going point about being able to type without looking at the keyboard. If you look down while you type you won’t see the instant results as they appear. Long tail could be fine. SEO may even be fine. I wonder how many people in Ireland can type…?
I guess google really needs to make some changes to compete with the attention and revenue facebook ppc must be getting. I guess we’re also too lazy as a race to click the submit button :) Although if we don’t need it, why have it right? I’m also in agreement with Artisan. Soon the last thing anyone sees on the google results page will be the organic search results. That sort of clutter reminds me of yahoo in early-mid 90′s.
Good article – I do agree with the pov that many long tail searchers (now) will find themselves diverted to the head or ‘chunky middle terms’ so in my mind I’m seeing a big impact on those long tail marketers.
I don’t think there is a real possibility that seo dies as so may predict but the game gets far more competitive as the tail moves to the middle!
If I’m right in my thinking, Google stands to make an even bigger fortune from ppc as the competition for those chunky middle searches heats up!
The only constant is change with the Google people.
Normally, you can understand their changes. They make sense and either pan out quickly or they kill them.
However, this one seems utterly useless and it affects too many existing functions negatively. All just so searches can look down a list of near random nonsense when they could type in 3-5 specific words and almost immediately find exactly what they are looking for.