Google Instant and SEO – How Is SEO Affected by Google Instant?

As most everyone has noticed by this point, Google Instant is now live.  Searches provide results real-time, making the things you’re searching for appear more quickly, and in some cases, allowing searchers to find other results they may not otherwise have discovered.  There is a lot of speculation out there on how this will affect SEO.

Does this mean SEO is dead?  Only if you stick to old SEO techniques.  True SEOs adjust with the times, since it’s a changing method, a changing technology.  If you don’t adapt and evolve your techniques with the changes the search engines provide, your SEO methods will eventually become extinct.

This does mean there’s a change coming for SEO, although even Google’s Matt Cutts admits it’s a gradual one that will happen over time, not one that will occur overnight.

Google Instant shows results as you type.  I’ve seen how some of the predicted text results show before you actually complete your search.  I think this will affect SEO and what needs to be done to retain traffic through people who use Google.  Since many people may stop using the “Search” button, perhaps it’s focusing further on this predictive text that is an adjustment that will be needed for SEOs.

It looks like Google Instant’s here to stay, so whether SEOs like it or not, we’ll all need to adjust to make necessary tweaks to our methods and approaches.