Google Instant Tool and the Future of the Internet

By: Chris Cox Date Posted: September 9, 2010

Google Instant Demo (above)

The Google Instant Tool is another one of Google’s efforts to crush Bing-Hoo (since the amalgamation of Yahoo & Bing fairly recently), adding to their newly released – and copied I might add from Bing – infinitely scrolling image search results.

What this means for us right now is that searches become even faster and even more “instant gratificationy”. It’s kind of a bit like science fiction to me and it makes me feel like we’re just stepping into Star Trek or something, like touch it and it just finds it LITERALLY instantly from all over the world. That’s pretty awesome right?

Combined with the keyword suggestion tool (where the dropdown gives you search ideas), it feels a bit like they’re trying to read my mind. And with the power of crowds, as they track our searches and results, they kind of are. All of this means a better experience for you and me, the users. And although the change is superficial – expect Bing to follow suit because we’ve all known since Apple destroyed the MP3 player market with iPod that the veneer and experience of use is just as important as the product itself.

Another truly awesome thing – is using this for maths and conversions – tell Google to convert one unit of measurement to another. Real time answer – no need for calculator function anymore. Same thing with defining words, no need for dictionary any more. SWEET!

What I must say I find absolutely fascinating is how it interacts with ads getting shown there. They change just as instantly as the results do.

What that means:

  • You’re going to see lower click through rates on your ads – they getting shown all over the show as people type their searches and refine their results in real time, so you’re getting more irrelevant impressions on the way.
  • There is one thought that broader terms are going to get more clicks as they’re more instant. I agree, perhaps at first, but as users get used to it, I think the long-tail will come back stronger than ever. You’re going to get even more targeted clicks in the end – when someone eventually settles on their search phrase, they’ll have seen the alternatives enroute and won’t be pondering that this might be the best result – they can just change it in real time and see. So when they settle they’re more likely to be happy with the results, and when they click, it’s because you’re ad is most relevant.
  • Your ads had better be super well written and relevant. I’d say more than anything I’ve seen in recent times this pushes us to create loads of niche adgroups targeted around even more niche searches, with ad copy written for each search. Because they won’t be settling for almost-good enough results when it’s not even a page-refresh away to see there are better results out there.
  • We might see more attention paid to SEO than to pay per click ads — the attention tends to focus on the search and the results immediately below it – the paid ads are almost secondary in this new vision. So I wonder if we’ll see more SEO focus and less PPC focus?

It might mean more than that too though. Any thoughts? I can’t see a specific application here for musicians – can you?

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