Google Live Search and What it Means?

Google tends to make big announcements once every year to do with changes to its search results. Today Google are set to do just that. They have organised a press conference today at 17:30, UK time. All signs suggest that Google will be announcing the launch of their new feature, live search. This feature is a new idea which many believe Google has been testing over the past couple of months.

The most obvious sign which leads us to believe that live search will be launched soon is the new Google logo. If you have used Google today you will have been presented with a “chrome” coloured sign. With each letter typed into the search box, a part of the Google logo fills with colour. This is representative of the way in which live search will work.

What is Live Search?

The term ‘live search’ is self explanatory. It basically means that the search results will change as you type in your search phrase. E.g. if you were searching for the term “strawberry cheesecake” as you type the letters, first you may see results for straw, then strawberries, then lastly, strawberry cheesecake.

This update seems set to be rolled out on Google.com first, but then other Google domains will be sure to follow. As to whether other search engines such as Bing will follow this example is unclear, but if it becomes the default way for which users prefer to search it will certainly be something they need to think seriously about.

What we think the impact of Live Search will be on SEO

At first glance the introduction of live search simply appears to make it quicker for users to get to search results, but we believe it has much bigger implications for SEO.

One of the first issues is that of long tail key terms. It seems to us that long tail search terms may become a thing of the past as they become less and less popular. Using the example of ‘strawberry cheesecake’ again, the user may find a relevant result after only typing strawberry, and subsequently will not need to bother with typing in the whole search phrase they originally intended to.

With this example it seems clear to us that short tail keyphrases will become more popular and will in turn increase the level of competition to optimise for them. We may even see a shift in the type of phrases being optimised where companies concentrate on the first three letters of a popular search term such as ‘str’.

Another factor which could cause a stir is that Google will obviously make assumptions as to what the user is trying to type. This means that it may give preference to certain keyphrases, which will again, make some terms extremely popular and more competitive. We may even find that Google leans more towards its own products and services, ensuring that its sites appear early on in the live search process.

Google already does this in many ways through the auto complete function, where it suggests search terms, relating to what users are typing in, however in our opinion, live search seems set to take this much further.

On a separate note it will be interesting to see if safe search will be incorporated into the new live search feature. The implications are obvious when you think about completing searches that may innocently contain adult terms. Examples of these would be Sexton and Sex Pistols; these are both terms that have nothing to do with the adult industry but may bring up results relating to it as the first few letters are entered ‘sex’.

Pay Per Click Implication

Not only do we think that live search will have a huge impact on organic searches, PPC will also have to be looked at in a different manner.

The sponsored links that appear on most search results are catered for that specific keyword. Every sponsored link displayed within a search result equates to one impression. Therefore effectively with Live Search, the keyphrase ‘strawberry cheesecake’ could result in three or more impressions rather than one. If this is the case, shorter tail keyphrases are set to get a much larger volume of impressions than ever before.

Also, if like we predict, more emphasis it put on shorter tail keyphrases, we may see click through rates decreasing as PPC listings become less relevant with the more generic search terms. This in turn will inevitably lead to greater emphasis on quality as companies strive to get the highest quality score possible for these very competitive broad terms.

Conclusion

It is always difficult to predict what will happen in the future especially in the SEO industry. But as shown by our possible implications above it is clear it will have an obvious impact on which keywords websites will optimise for. Most importantly we need to think of the results that appear between the initial typing of the search term and completed keyword entry.
In some of the video examples of live search there is an option to turn off the live stream, but as this is not the default, the majority of Google users will be utilising the new search feature.
If you look outside the box on this update to the way live search works, and the way we think it will mark a shift towards more generic short tail phrases, it seems that this is yet another move by Google to benefit brands. After all, shorter tail keyphrases mean high levels of competition which only the strongest sites can achieve.

Authors: Gemma Neesham, and David Stopher.