Google today introduced what many are calling a major evolution in search interface today, sparking a landslide of commentary about the impact on SEO, mobile, competitors, search share, revenue, you name it.
It's a lot to digest, and as much as I'd like to have a definitive statement on Google's move to "instant search," I don't. Yet. I prefer to use it for a while, and think on it a bit more. I will admit that my initial response is more "meh" than "WOW!" – but then, I can't really back that up. In the main, I think any major shift in search interface that is still predicated on typing inside a command line is most likely not going to change things much.
Live Blogging Google 'Streaming" Search Event & How To Watch Live (SEL) Danny's coverage of the news as it happened.
Search: now faster than the speed of type (Google Blog) The official announcement, with video.
Google Instant Makes SEO Irrelevant (Rubel) Not so fast, says Matt, below.
Thoughts on Google Instant (Matt Cutts) Matt is a key guy on search quality at Google. He says Google Instant will not kill SEO, among other things.
About Google Instant (Google.com) More from Google on why they did it.
Google Instant: A Mobile App Approach to Search (GigaOm) Interesting and cogent insight.
Google Instant Search: The Complete User's Guide (SEL) As you would expect, second day overview on the first day from SEL.
Google Instant officially announced. Never underestimate speed. (TNW) Speed is the focus of Google's announcement.
Google Just Killed The "I'm Feeling Lucky Button" (GOOG) (SAI) And, according to SAI, made a cool 100MM+ in the process.
I don't like it, i think Google really made mistake here.
Example: I search for World news today and till now the first result was cnn.com. But as of now, Google suggest result for ABC and by bye goes CNN. Try it!
My main concern as an SEO'er of Instant is optimizing for key phrases.
Do we suddenly have to start for optimizing for the first few letters or parts of words – i.e. 'web d' instead of 'web design', as these will show in Google?
I think Insant is playing into the hands of Black Hatters myself.
Also noticed it on other sites with collarity search like http://www.myfoxny.com. So it doesn't look like an innovative concept.
It may be a simple thought – but to me instant search will now shape people's search phrases. Will that create a narrower group of phrases people will use to search with? I would suspect so – but then wouldn't their using the suggested phrase just be more votes for the popular/most common phrases and thus narrow the range of possible phrases used?