Google Suggest Changing the Way We Optimise Content
In a recent post from the Official Google Blog entitled “At a loss for words?” we learnt of the newest thing to be coming out of Google Labs and into the main search landscape: Google Suggest. Google Suggest is “a search feature that provides real-time suggestions while we search.” We’ve all seen it on our Google Toolbars, and often times found it quite useful; but did we predict that it would become part of the standard Google search homepage.
Well, with the response from the industry on the topic, it seems several people didn’t consider the effects this might have on how we are optimising content for the search queries of our target audiences. Interactive Return is dedicated to considering all factors influencing organic and sponsored search marketing campaigns, and so the news proves important for future optimisation efforts.
While providing search suggestions as you type, Google is hoping to make the search process even more convenient and efficient. Yet, this will greatly change the keywords we will see and the value some of them may hold. The Jaan Kanellis Blog outlines some of the possible effects.
First off, we will see less misspellings; and so optimising for these terms may become pointless. Second, the Google Suggest function saves keystrokes, and so people won’t actually have to type in the keywords. And because of this, we may see the biggest change with the loss of long tail keywords. Instead of typing in specific 4-5 word phrases, searchers may be distracted by the shorter Google Suggest phrases; whether it was their initial intention to search for that or not.
For those of us who are currently ranking for the keywords commonly generated by the Google Suggest tool, you should find yourself expecting a lot more traffic.
Interactive Return will certainly be monitoring the effects of Google Suggest going live. Tracking the success of certain keywords versus others will become crucial to developing strategies to retain high visibility; and extra consideration will be given to how much value we are placing on keywords, especially misspellings.
Emer Lawn, Online Marketing Executive, Interactive Return