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Category: SEO Fundamentals
September 8, 2010
According to Steve Rubel, Google Instant means the end of SEO. He writes that “Once a single search would do the trick – and everyone saw the same results. That’s what made search engine optimization work.”
Oh Steve. That’s not what makes search engine optimization work. That’s not what true search engine optimization is at all. Here’s what makes search engine optimization work and why Google Instant isn’t the death knell.
- Everyone searches. Google said today that they get 1 billion searchers a week. People search a lot. So it’s important to be visible in search if you want to connect with your audience.
- A big part of SEO is ensuring that your technical site architecture can be crawled and indexed by search engines and the content can be extracted. If the infrastructure isn’t search-friendly, your pages may not be available in the index for searchers to find.
- Another big part of SEO is understanding the needs of your audience: what their problems are, what they are looking for, what tasks they are trying to accomplish, the language they use. Search data is awesome for finding these things out and better building products and content.
But the biggest misunderstanding of Rubel’s post is that SEO is about optimizing for a single query and that everyone saw the same results until now. In reality, searchers have been seeing different results for a really long time. Personalized search in particular has been increasing over time, causing everyone to see something different. And Google Suggest has also been around forever, so the idea of prompting refinements as the searcher types a query also isn’t new.
Sure, searchers may tweak their queries in real time, but they aren’t going to fundamentally change what they’re looking for. If I’m looking for a restaurant in Seattle, I’m not going to see results for “relaxing vacations in Mexico” and decide to go to Cabo instead of out to dinner.
I’ve always advised looking at audience needs and building a site that addresses them holistically rather than fixating on ranking for a single keyword phrase. And that strategy continues to be a sound one in light of Google Instant. Rubel says it will make “optimizing virtually impossible”. But the reality is that building valuable sites that meet searcher needs will only continue to grow in importance.
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Vanessa,
I agree with you. Search will not die and neither will seo. Change in how it is done – perhaps, die – NO.
ps – Please remove the link to Steve Rubel’s post since “seo is dead” anyways. I see his post as a plot to get a lot of those “links”, so he should not need it
Thanks Vanessa for throwing a little water on the fire. With all the Google changes in the past 6 months SEO seems like chasing the tail sometimes. But calm people like yourself help to bring down the hysteria. Hope to meet you in person someday.
P.S. Are you doing a show on webmasterradio.fm tomorrow??
100% with you on this!
If anything this just means we need to adapt, I can never understand why people jump to conclusions like this without first exploring the potential.
SEO will never die, as long as you adapt to changes!
I for one think that this change helps us, they have given us a great tool here, check out my post- http://www.polishedmedia.co.uk/uncategorized/google-instant-the-evolution-of-search-in-a-good-way.html
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Well, Steve is correct to a certain extent. Google Instant is killing SEO to a certain extent as well. Its correctly pointed out as because users may tweak their results in realtime.
If someone searches for a “relaxing vacations in Mexico” he might end up typing “relaxing vacations” when Instant shows him a attractive result like “30% discount for relaxing vacations in guatemala”. What then???
He might change his mind for Mexico’s neighbour instead. The SEO done for Mexico’s resorts get doomed. Sadly again, as the term was not even searched for!!! The articles posted by the SEO optimizer and read by the then to-be Mexico visitor becomes a Guatemala tourist.
I agree that Search Engines are getting more enhanced every day. But, not all improvements lead to 100% benefits for all.
You are absolutely right, Vanessa! Not only are Google’s search results not the same for everyone – and haven’t been for a long time, as you say – they are also not the only way people find web content anymore (social links via Facebook and Twitter are becoming very important to content discovery). Content is the key, and even with instant search it will remain so. Actually if you think about how important real-time is, with tweets and their resulting tweet-trails generating tons of new content every second (re-tweets, republishing, paper.li, etc.) it makes sense to have instantaneous results as you type a query into Google.
When will people learn? If it means anything, it means people need to focus even more attention on the fundamental principles, increasing relevance and focus of content, develop better on-site depth in even more refined content relationships.
That’s a principle everyone should have realized when personalized search first hit the scene, and if they didn’t then, they should have when MayDay was implemented.
SEO becomes more relevant, not less. Searches will be more focused and a larger payback (conversion rate) can be realized. Next Subject…
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Thank you for the rebuttal! I couldn’t type my comment on his blog fast enough LOL, but here it is:
“I think your a bit off friend … if all your focused on is keyword targeting SEO may be dead in your eyes. But if you focus on the three core elements of modern day SEO (Indexablity, Content Development and Content Promotion) then it’s very much alive and well. You need to ensure Google can find and crawl you site. Then you need to create content that resonates with topics people are searching for. And lastly you need to promote that content so Google’s algo’s trust it’s value for their users. How do these three things change by the way they display results. Or is SEO dead because now your ranking reports aren’t accurate??? Guess your just going to have to use the data in webmaster tools, or rely on analytics for success metrics … something that most of us have been doing for a while. Ranking reports are dead, not SEO!”
Ryan Adami
You’re right: Google Instant won’t kill SEO, but it definitely means the rules of the game have changed. Work will need to be done to understand the new rules. Personalization may have existed, but that’s *not* the biggest change for SEO, in my opinion.
The biggest change is that the “best match” for a few letters, is much more important now.
Looking for a car, if I type in “vol”, I’ll be getting back results (and ads) on Volvos. This probably won’t please Volkswagen too much, being another car manufacturer whose name starts with “vol”. I wrote some more on this topic here: http://www.loopycode.com/google-instant-thoughts-on-interface-and-seo/. There’s also a screenshot there of the “vol” search, if you’re interested.
But if Google autosuggests Volvo over Volkswagen, then that means Volvo must have higher search volume to begin with. But anyway, I don’t think this will change search behavior so much as to have them change their query to a different brand of car. I think what we’ll see is that people will choose more refined searches for what they were already starting to type. one and two word queries make up over 40% of searches, so if a searcher types in that one word (or two) and then sees a suggestion for longer query that is more focused, then the searcher might choose that. I could be totally wrong, but I think this will mostly cause people to do a more refined search for what they were already searching for, not switch searches entirely.
The biggest brand update to of happen in years. Google now favours coporations, type in t you tescos, type in j you get john lewis, type in b you get bbc. Many thanks Google finally enacting the most fantastic transition of wealth from the middle class to the ruling class in years. don’t be evil what a load of total crap
A bit too early jumping to conclusions (both sides) ?
Interesting move from Big G anyway.
I would guess its going to kill off more of the longtail search queries as you may not have to use such long and specific queries if you can progressively refine them.
A good question is what data is Google going to pass back to your Adwords/Analytics platform is it going to be the partial keyword query or the whole keyword?
Booyah! Thanks Vanessa.
Steve was a bit delusional when it came to that post.
Changes in search are inevitable. As search marketers it is up to us to keep pace with the engines and not just throw in the towel when another change to the user interface is introduced.
I don’t think SEO is dead but I think it is evolving. People used to focus on keywords, in particular long tail keywords, to bring traffic to their website. There were a lot of accidental traffic to websites.
I think google’s intention is to make search result more relevant for its users and help them find what they want faster (bye bye unnecessary long tail)
Google can’t kill SEO because if they do, then they will kill PPC as well because keyword selection strategy is fairly close and we all know PPC is Google’s bread and butter.
I think this makes it as important as ever to target and choose the right keywords as the results show in real time as a user types you can actually get rankings before a user completes full “multi word” keywords now. This might give sites who target single keywords that start with what/who/how…etc an advantage initially if the result catches their eye.
As long as there are search engines that send traffic, there will be search engine optimization. It might not be what it is today, just like it’s nothing like what it was in 2000, 2002, 2004, etc… but as long as you can make money capturing search traffic, there will be people figuring out the formula to get the traffic = SEO.
To say ‘SEO is dead’ is just a weak, beaten-to-death, unimaginative, impotent, link grab. Why give it merit (links)?
A more accurate statement would be: ‘SEO is dead, is dead’.
Here’s the essential problem with searches:
Somebody’s parents just died and they inherited a “1965 Mustang 2-door coupe in mint condition” that they’ve decided to sell. They figure it might be worth something, but they’re not into cars. They have no clue what it’s worth, how to go about getting a good deal on it, or even where to sell it.
Then there’s a guy somewhere looking for a “classic 60′s era muscle car in excellent shape” who’s got money to burn and isn’t thinking specifically of Mustangs. Nor does he care how many doors it has on it.
These two are like ships passing in the night.
Yet, this is typical of how humans think about things.
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) doesn’t even come close to matching up these two very different expressions that almost anybody who was alive in the 60′s in America can recognize instantly as being highly related.
I worked on a project back in the mid-80′s with an organization attempting to facilitate tech-transfer from government research labs to commercial R&D companies. This mismatch in lexicon and linguistic expressiveness prevented the majority of useful technology from being “found” by companies who could use much of it immediately.
I kept pushing them to employ a multi-faceted semantic-based searching mechanism. They kept insisting all they needed was a way to do simple word matches, like what search engines eventually ended up doing. They found someone to do that, and it floundered around for a couple of years before it was de-funded for failing to facilitate any meaningful tech-transfer.
Example: researchers at a Government lab in New Mexico had just patented a method for performing “long-wavelength infra-red interferometry using sub-micron sensors”. Meanwhile, a researcher with a Silicon Valley hard disk drive manufacturer was looking for a way to create an, “optical servo-positioning mechanism for high-density magneto-optic recording media”. It’s a match made in heaven that only came about serendipitously. That was 1986. In 2010, Google isn’t going to help those two find each other any easier!
The world doesn’t need a way to find the same universe of irrelevant answers faster.
It needs a way to find meaningful information expressed in a very different jargon than what’s used by the searcher.
The metric isn’t how many searches are run each week. It’s how many people were able to find meaningful results in a reasonable amount of time, and how many just gave up.
This is a realm of SEO that hardly anybody is addressing.
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Yeah, adaptation makes sense. Does anyone know where I can buy some links with anchor text “digital camer”?
Larry! You have made my day.
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personally and for my company i decide to look at every change as an opportunity. the great thing about google instant is the fact, that it introduces semi-impressions before the actual impressions. these pass through impressions are a new opportunity http://tupalo.com/en/blog/pass-through-impressions/
maybe we will see a more “stop”, “wait”, “look here” subliminal words in title, meta descriptions soon.
Wonder what this will do to the number of Impressions shown in WMT
They said impressions will go up:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-instant-impact-on-search-queries.html
My guess is that CTR will go down, since even though how they are accounting for impressions seems reasonable, it’s still probably counting instances when someone isn’t clicking on anything (for instance, types, pauses 3 seconds, then types some more).
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sort of tired of link bait with “SEO is Dead” in the title…
People must realize that SEO is not a “one shot” deal. You need to stay abreast of current changes with regard to Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., and adapt accordingly.
I look at this as an opportunity to further enhance SEO for my personal sites along with those of my clients.
SEO will never die… it simply morphs over time.
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I think SEO is not going to dead because of this updates.
I think that it will make some impact on GOOGLE ADWORDS….is it?
Take this as positive updates, it will always going to be happiest search ever with google.
“Google Instant! The Evolution of Search and the Evolution of SEO, In A Good Way…!!”
Our new site is nowhere near complete, but with all the talk about SEO & Google Instant, I just had to write on the results of my tests: Google Instant Equals Death to SEO? Nope! If Even Only for “Long Tail” Optimization, the Activation of Google Instant has Made SEO More Important! – http://www.orm101.com/google-instant-has-made-seo-more-important/
Good by anchor texts, hello anchor text, anchor tex, anchor te
) This is great! We build the google’s empire!
According to Steve’s bio:
“Steve Rubel, SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, is responsible for keeping Edelman and its clients in the vanguard.”
I’m glad my clients do not have this “vanguard” advice
Doesn’t this sound like good marketing hype? SEO is dead, long live Google Instant? It certainly has created a lot of buzz. This is flamebait as far as I can tell.
Ugh, Instant Search. I get a satisfaction from typing my complete search phrase out, even now when Google tries to guess what I’m searching for. I imagine others will do the same before even looking at the search results. It may be a quantum leap forward in search technology, but I don’t think it adds much to the average user’s search experience. Imagine SEO will stay somewhat the same.
Nice post!
when i was reading i think in your tweet: “oh no, now we gona focus on key-letter, not keywords.
this is really true!
if you are looking for bear, and apear beer, hell yeah i´m gonna change my query! hahaha
Us, SEO´s, will need to think more and more like our users!
In order to be one of the sites that comes up in the Instant search or SERP your site needs to be fully optimized.
How we optimize changes and that is a good thing. But it doesn’t mean that optimization is not important.
Googler Matt Cutts has weighed in with: “The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time,” says Cutts. “For example, I was recently researching a congressperson. With Google Instant, it was more visible to me that this congressperson had proposed an energy plan, so I refined my search to learn more, and quickly found myself reading a post on the congressperson’s blog that had been on page 2 of the search results.”
Google clearly said that ranking stays the same with Google Instant.
So, yes it’s interesting, yes SEO is evolving, NO SEO is not dying!
SOE is not dead! In fact if anything it is now much more competitive Google instant will change things but we must all be prepared to dance to googles tune. But how do we look at our marking strategy differently? Key words/phrases are still as important as ever but content is ultimately the most important factor. Do we now need to analyse what predictions are being produced and optimize for this? Can we optimise for individual letters?
I think we must look at each marketing campaign differently. The majority of people are not able type and look at the screen at the same time. Therefore depending on the type of person that is attracted to your site must influence your marketing strategy.
Personally I relish this leap forward, we live in an ever changing “virtual” world and we must all adapt or fall foul of the consequences.
Instant certainly makes being in the top 2 or 3 of organic SERPS a must, anything below the crease loses more relevance as it will rarely be seen; following on from that with Google’s suggestion box taking more of the ‘above crease’ screen up the only results visible will often be the top sponsored listings in the centre column and the top half dozen paid listings in the right hand column.
I agree totally. I don’t know what Steve Rubel understands about SEO, but he doesn’t seem to get it. Besides SEO is so much more than just search terms. Focus on making your site valuable for readers and spend some time building links and a community and it’ll get great rankings. That’s SEO karma!
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No one can ever tell that SEO is dying or will be dying. Unless someone fully understands the algorithms of search engines. And I don’t think major search engines will gladly give you the answers.
dirk_flail@yahoo.com
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Hi Vanessa,
I agree in that personalized results have been around for quite some time, three years by my count, Google Instant will not kill SEO, but the real estate of the SERP has definitely changed and at the end of the day are the most relevant results appearing where they should be? As a searcher or participant in SEO, it is all about the relevancy and ensuring that we find the information that we are looking for.
http://www.marketing-jive.com/…/google-instant-more-relevant-results-or.html
Vanessa,
I agree with you completely. Google brings value into the world by organizing the world’s information. The more valuable, relevant content you are creating, the higher you’ll rank.
In the giant machine that is the web, we often lose sight of the fact that at the end of the machine is a human being, and Google has done the best job of providing relevant search results to these human beings for the past decade. At the end of the day, if you serve your fellow humans with great content, Google will serve you.
Jason “Wally” Waldron
Wally the Web Guy
“Looking for a car, if I type in “vol”, I’ll be getting back results (and ads) on Volvos. This probably won’t please Volkswagen too much, being another car manufacturer whose name starts with “vol”.” Posted above is actually an example as to why SEO and SEM need to be better… not Blackhat, but simply more relevant.
Lets face it, if I’m in the market for a Volkswagen then I’m not likely to be interested in a Volvo. That aside, if I’m advertising something I’m not wanting to come up for such a random search (or any other, think house, car, shoe…etc). This has always been the point of REAL SEO. ROI.
Honestly, I’m only slightly concerned with my broad match AdWord campaigns. These may require a little tweaking to ensure that the CTR remains good.
If anything I see this as positive move. If someone is looking to make a purchase of “my-latest-and-greatest-widget” by using “wid” as their search term… I think today, tomorrow and forever they’re going to struggle to find it.
Has that really changed? Personally, I think not.
In terms of client SEO I haven’t noticed any dramatic drop in traffic (yet). I’ll have to wait a bit longer for users to get used to Instant before making any dramatic decisions.
One thing I am noticing, however, as both an end user and in analytics, is an increase in personalized traffic. Instant SERP vs. Query + [Enter] SERP frequently return different results, with Instant showing a greater reliance on personalized results.
Like most changes by the big G we’ll have to wait and see how everything pans out. I honestly don’t see it spurring dramatic change in the future because I always suggest developing content for users, not bots!
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Personally I find Google’s latest roll out a pain. It is slow and on my prehistoric PC it jumps the results around the page.
However the reality of search as it relates to Google is that it is as prehistoric as my obsolete PC.
Imagine in 2010 just as voyager is orbiting some vague solar object in the distant stratosphere Google is deciding web page relevance for a keyword search by the back-links attached to said site!!
So in reality any spammer with gray to black hat skills and a few auto linking tools can achieve number 1 rank in Google’s serp for any keyword he/she might care to, regardless of content or relevance of content to the actual search term.
The reason I feel that Google instant is irrelevant is because I feel that from the perspective of search Google is irrelevant.
Just at this moment Google may appear to be king of the hill but really, if back-links is the best they can do then it is only a matter of time before Stanford or MIT spawns search 2.0