Google Instant Search Review - Potential Nightmare for SEO?

Google released "Instant Search" this week.  Instant Search delivers your Google search engine results automatically as you type, with no need to hit the enter key.  Instant Search is built right into the Google home page, no software to download or install.

The more letters you type in the Google search box, the more refined the Instant Search results become.  This happens amazingly fast.  Google also displays its prediction of the rest of your keywords before you finish typing. (This has been around for a while.)

Seeing results instantly will let searchers adapt their search terms as they type.  Combined with the prediction feature, Instant Search could dramatically change how people select the keywords they want to search on.

The big question for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is how will this affect the popularity - and traffic - of your important keyword search phrases.

Instant Search changes the "search engine results page (SERP)" per letter typed.  So do us SEO-types now have to worry about "letter level" optimization?  I already beat my head against the keyboard trying to do SEO at the word level.

Will people change what keywords they would normally have searched on? What about people who aren't sure what words to use as a search term, will Instant Search drive them towards using the keywords Google recommends?  That's probably not a great thing.

For example, I started a search on "divorce attorney colorado springs" and by the time I typed the letters "divorce at" Google Instant Search was displaying the results for the keyword phrase "divorce attorneys in colorado springs co."  I know for a fact that the keyword phrase "divorce attorneys in colorado springs co" is not as popular a search term "divorce attorney colorado springs."  So Instant Search could definitely change the playing field in terms of the popularity of keyword phrases.

This could dramatically affect the traffic to websites that are optimized for specific keyword phrases.

I think this is probably a good thing for the Google Searchers, but as an SEO consultant I'm going to start testing my search terms at the "letter level" to see what impact his will have on my clients traffic from Google.

I'll keep you posted.

 Click to visit the Google Instant about page.