You may have noticed a change in how Google is working this week after the launch of Google Instant. Basically it works a little like predictive texting, as you write in your search query, it predicts what you are searching for and starts showing results based on those predictions even before you have finished writing it in.
For people like me who have small, niched websites, this is something we will have to rapidly adapt to. There is a real danger that it will favour the “big guy” and the most common search terms instead of allowing/forcing people to build long tail keywords that the niche players live off.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say that you have a company that helps people patent stuff. There is a lot of competition to get to the top of the search engines for this niche and you have realized that you cant compete for the search term “How to Patent” so you have instead built a website optimized for “How to Patent an Invention”.
90% of searches are for “How to Patent” but 10% are for “How to Patent an Idea” and you currently rank No.1 for that and you get enough business to have a nice little company.
Now Google instant comes along and before people have even had a chance to type in the words “an Idea”, they are already presented with a list of websites that look suitable, so they are off clicking on those and your company is down the tubes.
All these predictive tools in Google will in my opinion tend to favour larger companies who rank better for more common keywords than the smaller companies basing their strategies on long-tail keywords.
Adapt or die! Will be interesting to see what happens.
