I can't remember the last time I used a screen whose native resolution was 1024x768.
Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results
31–40 of 55 posts
Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results
#32I can say that both on my personal sites, and on my Fortune 100 client websites, I have seen increases in search traffic from Google after instant was lost, not decreases.
Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results
#33There are two blog posts with real data from tens of thousands of search queries showing that in reality, the impact of Google Instant has been negligible: - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-instant-fewer-changes-to-s... - http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/seo/impact-of-google-instant... I wish this type of sensationalist supposition without data to back up the assumptions received less attention here at HN. I've alwa…
Well, the impact on search query length may be negligible but there are other ways in which Instant may be changing search behavior. I have a small slice of data I hope to post in the very near future.
Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results
#34Instant's goal is to change user search behavior away from potentially long tail queries towards the head. If they can short circuit your potentially 4-6 word specific search that has fewer and lower paying advertisers associated for a shorter, higher interest/CPC search, they stand to make a lot more money and please larger brand advertisers. That they can wrap it up to users as "decreasing search time" and "better…
If they nudge people away from long tail queries, won't this mean that people will perceive the relevance of the search results to be worse? I doubt Google wants to start driving people to other search engines by making it harder for people to find what they are looking for.
If they nudge people away from long tail queries, won't this mean that people will perceive the relevance of the search results to be worse?
Only if the long tail results were better. I've sometimes gotten more relevant search results from removing keywords, even when those keywords seemed to be on the page I was looking for anyway: other pages were better ranked for those keywords, but less useful to me. I can see an argument, therefore, that presenting the intermediate results on the way to the full query could sometimes mean better results, quite apart from the advantage of getting the result you want faster.
Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results
#35Instant's goal is to change user search behavior away from potentially long tail queries towards the head. If they can short circuit your potentially 4-6 word specific search that has fewer and lower paying advertisers associated for a shorter, higher interest/CPC search, they stand to make a lot more money and please larger brand advertisers. That they can wrap it up to users as "decreasing search time" and "better…
I don't understand the cynicism. Do you have any evidence for this whatsoever?
He's absolutely, screamingly right. They're an advertising company. Big bang changes to the website exist to sell more advertising. Everything else they do is window dressing to make people forget that they are an advertising company.
Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results
#36Instant's goal is to change user search behavior away from potentially long tail queries towards the head. If they can short circuit your potentially 4-6 word specific search that has fewer and lower paying advertisers associated for a shorter, higher interest/CPC search, they stand to make a lot more money and please larger brand advertisers. That they can wrap it up to users as "decreasing search time" and "better…
Some money-making things, besides higher CPC, are highly correlated with "decreased search time" and "better search results". Mainly, the fact that Instant (to some people) makes Google their preferred search engine. I think it's a rather large claim that Instant's main purpose is to change user's search behavior.
The core goal of Google, even as an advertising company, is to provide the best product: search results, and derivatively, your experience getting to those results. While what you are positing might be true, I suspect that core goal of Instant is to provide a substantial edge over Google's competitors.
If I were Google right now, my main concern would be: Other search engine's results are almost as good as ours, and for the large part, "good enough." We need to maintain our competitive edge by creating the best search experience possible: fast, novel [notice more doodles lately?], and with "innovations" features that generate buzz about our edge-cutting.
I'm working on a product that aims to replace Google as users' start pages. The goal has become: How can I make something that gets users to specific results faster than Google does? The answer: For a lot of things, there is no possible way. They've put so much into making their product fast and efficient, which is all you really care about when you're looking for something. I suspect Instant is just another edge they want to have over competitors in a such a valuable market.
In case you're wondering about what I'm making, the goal has actually become: How can the process of searching be commodified?
Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now that I think about it, the whole argument is bogus. For every SERP where your result loses traffic by virtue of falling below the fold, there's probably a SERP where your result gains traffic because the competitors fall below the fold. Sorry, this hypothesis is neither logically correct nor is it backed up by any facts. Do some real experiments next time before you start making claims of having discovered scient…
I don't think that SO's users are representative of google's as a whole. For example, there are a lot less advertisements on software development related searches. What I was pointing out is the high-volume, high revenue searches are being impacted. Plus I'm guessing that people who do those searches are much less savvy than your community. They are less likely to scroll, they have smaller screens and they are proble…
Any evidence of that?
Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results
#38today is the day of science on HN - this 25% of Organic Free-Range Antibiotic-Free Search Results were definitely
topped by masturbating squirrels. I bet squirrels had much more fun in their story than Google in its.
Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results
#39There's been quite a lot of UX research on this, and the concept of "the fold" simply doesn't exist for webpages. People scroll and scan, even the least knowledgeable ones.
You're exaggerating. Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. The part of what you're saying that's true is that people scroll at all. This is new. See http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html
You're both right. Users aren't reluctant to scroll if they believe there is something they want to see. However, most pages are designed so that all of the relevant stuff is above the fold. Most of the time, you just don't need to scroll down, because the page is set up to have the most relevant things above the fold, and the least relevant things below.
Re: Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that SO's users are representative of google's as a whole. For example, there are a lot less advertisements on software development related searches. What I was pointing out is the high-volume, high revenue searches are being impacted. Plus I'm guessing that people who do those searches are much less savvy than your community. They are less likely to scroll, they have smaller screens and they are proble…
Any evidence of that?
Which part? The fact that novice users have a hard time distinguishing between PPC and organic results? Anecdotal with the many novice users I have dealt with.
That there is less advertising for software related keywords vs. other types of keywords? Try out Google's adwords traffic estimator: https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox